Amidst all the noise about etailers winning over consumers with predatory pricing and unethical retail practices, it is not the only side of the story about online retail. Apparently, the so-called online-offline tiff doesn’t have any concrete base, as the clientele for both are different. They should not be seen as different avenues to reach the same customer.
With online shopping catching the fancy of consumers, one would think physical shops are getting much lesser sale. But many traditional retailers who have taken their sales online feel that their online customers are different, accounting to just about one-fifth of their offline customer base.
Several brands like Viveks (consumer durables), Basics Life and Arvind Ltd (clothing), Kirtilals (jewellery), Nalli and Palam (Sarees) etc. have entered the ecommerce space to grab their share of the bludgeoning ecommerce market. Apparently, most of their customers are completely new and those who did not have access to their products earlier.
“We see that there is just a 20% overlap of customers who earlier shopped in our stores and are now shopping on our online portal, opening up a new customer base for us. From the data we have, we see that a lot of our new clients come from tier2/tier3 towns and based on the products ordered, we see that the customer base is predominantly the youth segment,” Suhail Sattar, co-founder and director of Hasbro Clothing which owns the Basics Life brand, said.
Even Creyate, started by Arvind group, has their fair share of new customers as opposed to older ones from their traditional stores. “We have had thousands of new customers registering on our online portal. The familiarity of the Arvind brand helps but we also see many new clients coming online and shopping for products costing over Rs1.5 lakhs,” Tejinder Singh, COO of Arvind Internet Ltd which owns creyate.com, said.
It is not just the natives of smaller towns who are potential online buyers. There are many who move to smaller towns from big cities due to their careers or similar reasons and these are people who are used to brands in the cities. So they turn to online shopping to fulfil their requirements.
So this leads to market size widening, which demands specialised marketing from brands to reach out to such potential buyers. Some like Basics Life are spending a lot on digital advertising to reach out to customers, while some like Palam sarees are on the lookout for new ways to appeal to customers.
“I have a completely new client base for my online portal, and they are those who have no access to my products in any other way. For my products, what matters most is the fabric, and if I can take my sarees to them once by organising an exhibition at their place, and show them the fabric, it will win their confidence and they can then start ordering different colours or designs from the online portal,” Jayashree Ravi, proprietor of Palam said.
Right now, the major tussle between online and offline companies is the pricing factor. But industry experts feel that the discounts being offered online will stabilise soon. Online portals will have to reduce the discounts being offered and offline stores will slash down prices to meet customers demand. So maybe this would lead to offline and online channels meeting one another half way and better peace in the overall retail horizon.
One scenario to watch out for, don’t you think?
After dwindling with her family business, into travel and hospitality, for more than 3 years, Pooja Vishant found her true love in writing. Happy-go-lucky and cheerful, she loves pink; so pink is the way to go if you want to get into her good books. The Associate Editor keeps track of even a leaf that has moved in the ecommerce world!
Leave a Comment
