Bengaluru: The retail industry in the country has seen revolutionary changes with the onslaught of e-commerce. Since 2012, the ‘showrooming’ phenomenon that involves consumers browsing products in physical stores before buying them online at discounted rates has been hitting physical storeowners hard.
But reports from retail researcher L2 indicate that the tide has changed. It says users these days are more prone to ‘webrooming’, that is consumers buying products in stores after researching online.
According to Google's new study on local search, close to 33 percent of consumers said they would buy in stores rather than buying online, if they knew they were close to a store, could get the product quickly and were given better pricing and discounts.
Nifty Window, a hyper local discovery and Omni-channel conversion platform in the country, leverages brands’ offline assets and drives online consumers to nearby offline stores or online store.
“The challenge faced by most e-commerce sites is that they have limited stock from each brand and most online consumers are left unaware of the vast stock that is available in stores,” Rakesh Raghuvanshi, Founder and President, Nifty Windows, said.
Providing platform for connecting online browsing to offline buying, Nifty Window caters to big Indian brands that have realised the necessity of omni-channel retailing, including, Unilever, Dominos India, Harley Davidson, Future Group, Titan, Madura Garments and Decathlon.”We live in times of tremendous change both in terms of consumer expectations as well as technologies to serve them,” Arun Narayan, general manager and business head at Titan's Helios Store said.
“Using a platform like Nifty that directs online traffic to physical stores, consumers can view over 4000 styles across the chain and we take over 200 such orders every month that leads to watches moving from Guwahati to Bangalore or Surat to Vizag, helping us offer consumers' the best choice,” Narayan said.
Founders of online to offline conversion platforms believe that despite the growing popularity of e-commerce, it will complement, but never do away with brick and mortar stores. There are industries where it's not just a preference, but absolute necessity for the consumer to interact with the product. However, having the information available online makes it easier for the consumer to do their homework before making an investment.
“Initial response of retailers who were pushed to online stores and had to compete with smooth user interface and heavy discounts was half-hearted. But by adopting alternate ways to leverage the online platform, they have seen a surge in their sales by combining both online and offline marketing,” Raghuvanshi said.
