Can Expansion Become Retail’s Elixir For Stability?

Every minute we breathe, 266 new consumers are coming into this world. That’s nearly 16 thousand new humans in a day and approximately 140 million in a year.

This truly puts a lot of weight on retail companies to grow across geographies and reach the 7.9 billion consumers worldwide.

Even India is expected to see a  25% increase in new retail stores openings in 2022, to meet the pent up demand post covid. Businesses are aggressively increasing their footprint in general trade. Online players have also begun planting roots across the offline retail market.

Because expanding is important, right?
The population will keep growing, so the brand must too.

Well, no.

In the future, particularly in  2099, the number of newborn babies is expected to reduce to 125.26 mn.

The many reasons behind this are the lowering fertility rate, urbanization, and rising cost of living and healthcare that’s making people realise how hard it is to sustain themselves, let alone others.

So, it’s not really profitable in the long run to go about increasing the number of retail stores randomly, without any forethought.

Being available everywhere can often diminish the value.

A little kid who finds his favourite chocolate only at a particular shop, would probably feel the desire to have it every time he passes the shop.

Whereas, if he starts seeing it in all shops around him, he might not feel so tempted to have the chocolate.

So a more strategic and sound approach to expanding the business would be to make use of the world of eCommerce to increase offline revenue.

Here’s how to do it.

Use retail intelligence software to analyze the demand of the online world and correlate it with the offline shopping behaviour and buying patterns of consumers across different markets. 
The tool will study each data set and predict the right pockets where retail brands should expand their business.

But even by locating demand, it won’t be easy to reach these consumers seamlessly every day.

Rural India, for example, makes up for 40% of the current 834 million internet user base in India.

And expansion in the rural markets is comparatively faster and more cost-effective. Still, rural India is not so infected with retail brands because of its broken distribution network and lack of proper infrastructure.

Luckily, both of these can be fixed by building a digital supply chain with retail technology.

By doing so, distributors and retailers can constantly stay connected to the brand using a Mobile DMS or Retailer app.

Moreover, thanks to mobile-based sales management apps that work perfectly in the worst network conditions, even salespeople won’t face problems in getting sales orders from the remotest locations.

Another retail technology tool that can be leveraged to get a similar result is – Smart Basket. This software uses data to predict the exact products and units each retailer should stock, making it easier to expand the reach of different product lines at the perfect places.

Thus, expansion strategies need to be combined with retail technology to become the elixir that can grow retail in 2022.

What are your expansion plans? Do data and the right retail technology back them?
Before you go all out without a proper guarantee,  explore Bizom’s retail intelligence platform to easily calculate each move and its impact on your trade.

To schedule a discussion with our team, mail us at marketing@mobisy.com or request a demo by clicking the link below.