Businesses today are no longer B2C (Business to Consumer) but its B and C (Business and Consumer) opined Ashish Mishra, MD, Interbrand India.
He was speaking at the Sri Lanka Retail Forum last week which focused on the emerging trends of retail both locally and globally.
He further emphasized that community is at the heart of retail landscape. Lots of mechanisms are used by apparel electronic and food and beverage retailers to attract consumers. All these create a stronger experience to customers.
“Retail is the interface between people and businesses. The new way of engaging in retail business is to identify customer requirements and fulfilling them. The conventional retail is no more.”
As expressed by Simon Wintels, Partner, McKinsey & Company, Retail shops have many things that no one asks for. Having personalized choices, structural cost advantage, superior customer insights and associating remarkable people make retailers different from others.
Sustainability is a key factor in terms of manufacturing. Initiating recycling projects would divert retail industry to a new era with emerging a number of job opportunities. “We initiated a beach cleanup project which was very successful. Also we use the leftovers in our textile production for fuel purposes within our industry” said Sharika Senanayake, Director Environmental Sustainability, MAS Holdings. One of the biggest mistakes that retailers do is not trusting online operations. It is up to them to get the situation advantageous to them in terms of customer needs. Future development cannot be fulfilled unless technology is embraced.
“E-commerce needs preparation. It doesn’t come immediately. There is huge potential in Sri Lanka for an explosive e-commerce opportunity” Bart van Dijk, Country Manager, Daraz Sri Lanka said. Moreover in 2017, 150 million searches were done on Google regarding e-commerce.
E-commerce helps brands to grow online. Content is very important when publishing brands online in order to get the full potential of the customers. Campaign participation, tighter cutoffs, consistency helps brands to grow online. “Most f the revenue of Daraz is derived by online transactions.” Daraz which was started in 2016 operates in 5 countries. It was fully acquired by Alibaba. Personalization should go beyond the basics at this age. Once data is available personalization becomes interesting.
Hence all retail traders must acquire data driven marketing. Data management platforms are essential for data driven marketing. “Apart from marketing, data expertise is also needed for organizations.” said Jayomi Lokuliyana, CEO, Zmessenger.
“Through data driven marketing, value to customers are created. Jayomi further said that the middle aged and older crowd in Sri Lanka should have more penetration to Internet.
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