Customer Care Associate & MD, Shoppers Stop, Govind Shrikhande talks on shaping the next level of retail consumption in India…
Omnichannel, to be or not to be?
Most of the online players are running an SOR model (Stimulus-Organism-Response Model – how retail environment influences consumer buying behaviour). It is up to brick-and-mortar retailers to create value of such kind that consumers come out and shop physically. Going Omnichannel is one way of doing this.
Fine to be only offline?
Android or iOS will not be the dominating factors; virtual reality will be the dominant factor. Every threat to the brick-and-mortar stores is an opportunity for online players, so retailers should not limit themselves to any percentage, because if one looks at the history of retail, in spite of all the ‘evolution’ retailers have been retailers!
What’s in store for future?
The reality is that the digital era is changing the world. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a ‘neither nor’ situation. It’s more about how much of a retailer’s sales is digitally influenced, rather than how much sales the e-commerce business is doing.
“The only formula of success is please understand your customers, try to understand what they are thinking today, what they may want tomorrow and be part of their lives” ~ Govind Shrikhande, Customer Care Associate & MD, Shoppers Stop, Govind Shrikhande
What went wrong for the retail industry?
Thirteen years ago, the organised retail industry said they are going to be 30 per cent of the total retail industry of India. But today, organised retail is still struggling at 10 per cent. Thirteen years back, there was nothing called ‘online’’, but today e-commerce is commanding a considerable amount of sales share. Now, the organised industry has to think why they were not able to capture value. In my opinion, it is because they have not thought about the industry as a collaborative platform. Customers are now looking at platforms, not channels. If retailers can work like platforms, and ensure there is no delay, they can get value back.
Is small the next big?
The cost of raising capital is really high in this country, but doing business is not so costly. So a lot more small enterprises are going to flourish in future. Kirana stores are not going to vanish any time soon, especially since the Indian market is unique because of the ‘MRP’ regime! So online players need to take that into account.
