Retail gain in FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) brand BIG BAZAR was a n excellent business model until hit by the e-retail storm. The brand had to liquidate itself but was not resurrected even then.
The retail landscape has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past few decades, primarily driven by advancements in technology and the changing preferences of consumers. This paradigm shift in the retail business is because of the newly introduced concept of Q-Commerce or Quick Commerce.
This blog delves into the intricacies of e-shopping and Q-commerce, highlighting their significance, benefits, and the future they promise.
What is E Commerce and how is it different to Q-Commerce:
Electronic commerce is basically a format where both the buyer and the seller have their presence on the virtual mode.
The retailer or the seller creates a virtual shelf by clicking and uploading the pictures of the real products in all possible variations and dimensions thus creating a virtual shelf.
On the other hand, the consumer should have the software availability and internet accessibility to be able to view the shelf. The purchase via the electronic commerce requires linking the bank account to internet banking system or connecting the bank account to the payment gateways like google pay, paytm etc. So as we see that there are lot many intermediary industries that are involved in process of e commerce.
Q commerce takes it a step ahead, where the stress is upon the retailers and their porters for the minute to minute doorstep delivery. Speeding up the delivery gives an increased demand to these retailers, at the same time creating a stronger need for more timely and accurate chain management.
The Convenience Factors of E-Shopping
Micheal Aldrich is considered to be the father of E Shopping. He revolutionized this concept via posting the apparel pictures in a magaz9ine.
The rise of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba has revolutionized consumer behavior, allowing individuals to shop from the comfort of their homes at any time of the day. India is witnessing a sweep in e commerce as more and more companies are investing in the Apparel, FMCG even light weight precious and semi-precious jewelry.
The trend has been absorbed by many more sectors like electronics, Automobiles and most surprisingly the real estate sector.
Another critical aspect of e-shopping is personalization. Regular online presence creates a user specific algorithm, that is dominated by key words. These key words when adopted in the description box of the seller, create a fresh prompt to the user on his social media page. This further accelerates the sales, where the demand gets created because of regular shelf updating. This level of personalization not only boosts customer satisfaction but also increases the likelihood of repeat purchases.
Some of the dangers of E-Shopping can be – payment security issues, low quality products and fraudulent sales. Though impulsive buying can be seen as one of the drawback in terms of eco system landfills, yet for this time it’s being cherished by the companies.
Challenges face by Q-Commerce: The Next Frontier: Quick commerce (Q-commerce) is experiencing rapid growth, yet it faces several significant challenges that could impact its sustainability and evolution:
Connecting to the TIER 2 and TIER 3 cities is going to be an uphill task for the Q Com companies. Regional distribution of the county creates differences in demands and variations in the product lines as expected by the consumers. Another dimension of the q commerce challenge will involve delivering the DAIRY and FARM FRESH requirements and ensuring their availability.
Developed countries are looking at the developing countries in lot many aspects for their business and economic expansions, yet the domestic market seems to be dominated and trusted by local and small business players as they understand the customers better than the capitalist giants. Some of the challenging aspects for the q commerce needs to tackle soon are as below:
- Complex Logistical Chain: Most commonly, the 20 minutes’ delivery assurance makes it difficult for the companies to reach its customers due to densely populated roads. This is giving an increase in Road safety issues of the porters. Companies must meticulously plan to balance speed and efficiency, especially during peak hours, which can lead to inefficiencies and increased operational costs.
- High Operational Costs: Though the DARK STORES have lesser maintenance sot issues in comparison to retail outlets, yet employing delivery processionals with the dark stores is going to be of utmost importance. The maintenance of technology infrastructure in these dark store is going to be of prime importance.
- Stock Forecasting Difficulties: Accurate demand forecasting is crucial for Q-commerce, which relies on limited stock and rapid turnover. Missteps can lead to either stock shortages or excess inventory, both of which can negatively affect customer satisfaction and profitability.
- Courier Overload: Though the need of the courier companies fast increased with the increase in the e commerce and q commerce companies. Yet the dearth is always evident.
- Customer Acquisition dependency via algorithms through SMO: While SEO and SMO have proved to be instrumental for providing targeted leads yet, the cost of acquiring new customers is seemingly high. As competition intensifies, Q-commerce companies face escalating costs in marketing and customer retention strategies2
What’s in Store in the years to come?
While this is just speculative to say how the world may turn its driving wheel, yet few developments can be traced and speculatively imagined to be following a certain path.
Lets first look at the factors that can be the precursors for these changes. The first in the list is the possibility of Natural Disasters. The commercial demand and supply curve changes in case the region or belt faces any form of natural disasters. Deriving examples from the historical events, situations like earthquake’s, storms fires are incidents that have completely changed the normal graph of demand and supply. Next to the cause and effect is the Man-made Disasters. We can take the geopolitical issues that are obviously created at the whims and fancies of certain prude nations. The commercial belts are not same throughout the globe. Though their choices and preference’s changes as per their regions, yet their special situations can deter the same.
Pandemic or epidemic like situation’s: Covid 19 changed the world. It introduced the concept of virtual presence in the companies. And for sure it changes the wants of the people. At one hand people wanted to convert their homes into offices on the other hand their needs for locomotion reduced. Another interesting observation during this situation was, the males started staying at home whereas the mediocre jobs involving women required them travelling from home to the work locations. It was the service sector that saw an unprecedented growth. Salons and cloud kitchen boomed and so did the OTT and IPTV TV Transmission models.
Technological encroachments: Amidst all other changes the only static fact is the change in technology. It is on a constant pace of advancing. With the Augment reality it’s the artificial intelligence that has swamped the world. The hardware going sleek to sleeker, the companies are seeking the technology to increase their pace of growth.
Delving into the newer parlance, there are certain software’s and services that will take up a dominant role in their niche field as well as in the sales and marketing filed. Computer animation has come a long way since inception in the year 1960. The fundamentals of animation software or animation tool can be traced back to the time when William Fetter, a computer graphics designer made a diagram of a human body inside an airplane cockpit. Although the intention was to maximize the efficiency of Boeing’s cockpits, it paved the way towards more sophisticated process flows and thus, towards animation generated by computers. A well-built animation software provides intuitive controls and flexibility that can be easily understood by a beginner but also has vastly superior tools for an experienced user. Taking up a common example is the Adobe Character Animator which is a real-time animator that uses your facial expressions, hand movements, full-body motion capture, and various other inputs to animate characters. It is extremely smooth and fast and you can live stream your development process to share work with team members or your audience. Just plug in your microphone, web camera and start animating! You can also create a character from your artworks in a few mouse clicks using the built-in Adobe Sensei.
As rightly quoted by Phillip Kotler “Competition represents only one force in the environment in which all marketers operate. The overall marketing environment consists of the task environment and the broad environment. The task environment includes the immediate actors involved in producing, distributing, and promoting the offering, including the company, suppliers, distributors, dealers, and the target customers. Material suppliers and service suppliers such as marketing research agencies, advertising agencies, Web site designers, banking and insurance companies, and transportation and telecommunications companies are included in the supplier group”.