Which of the following is not a benefit of a store channel shopping experience?

When customers feel appreciated, companies gain measurable benefits—including the chance to win more of their customers’ spending dollars. The payoffs for valued, great experiences are tangible: up to a 16% price premium on products and services, plus increased loyalty. While every industry sees a potential price bump for providing a positive customer experience, luxury and indulgence purchases benefit the most from top-flight service.

Customers also said they were more likely to try additional services or products from brands that provide superior customer experience. What’s more, while 43% of U.S. consumers said they would not give companies permission to collect their personal data (such as location, age, lifestyle, preferences and purchase history) to allow for more personalized, customized experiences, 63% said they’d be more open to sharing their data for a product or service they say they truly valued.

Omnichannel retail is no longer a nice-to-have. As more and more consumers have moved to online shopping in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has transformed into a must-have for successful ecommerce businesses.

According to research by Statista, almost one in two ecommerce decision-makers in Europe and North America believed omnichannel strategies to be very important in 2021.

Which of the following is not a benefit of a store channel shopping experience?

Furthermore, forecasters expect multichannel— often used interchangeably with omnichannel — sales to make up close to 46% of all ecommerce sales by 2023, up from 40.4% in 2019. 

Which of the following is not a benefit of a store channel shopping experience?

Omnichannel commerce is a strategy that provides a seamless shopping experience from the first touchpoint to the last, regardless of the channel your customer is using. It’s an approach that has already begun to show dividends for organizations.

Retailers selling through a single branded ecommerce site such as BigCommerce saw a 58% revenue growth after adding a marketplace.

Today, consumers are discovering brands in brand new ways and seeking contemporary conveniences to guide their shopping decisions. 

This article will cover the integration of online and offline channels — and all your operations — to deliver a cohesive and comprehensive experience across touchpoints.

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What is Omnichannel Retail?

Omnichannel retailing refers to transacting across multiple channels, which may include marketplaces, social channels, in brick-and-mortars and more. Omnichannel has become a popular buzzword, but it’s not just another way of saying that you sell on multiple channels. 

Let’s look at the sometimes-subtle differences among omnichannel, multichannel and single-channel commerce:

Omnichannel retailing.

A genuine omnichannel approach must deliver a consistent brand experience everywhere you sell to meet your customers where they are and build relationships that transcend channels. It should include an emphasis on optimizing your business model through channel diversification and comprehensive integration of your data and systems.

Within the retail space, there are growing expectations from customers that can only be solved through omnichannel retailing.  According to a study by UC today, nearly 90% of consumers want an omnichannel experience. Even more indicative of this shift is that 15 years ago, the average consumer used two touch points when purchasing an item. That number today?

Almost six touchpoints. 

The benefits of an omnichannel approach are not only immediate, in that you are able to open your business to multiple channels, but have become something customers desire — and even demand.

Multichannel retailing.

Like omnichannel, multichannel commerce refers to selling across multiple channels. However, multichannel experiences are often disparate, thanks to marketing efforts happening in silos, lacking a defined cross-channel message. Multichannel philosophies focus on optimizing by touchpoint rather than by journey. 

In an article from McKinsey, analysts write, “While companies can be tempted to focus on optimizing individual touchpoints, believing that the whole will automatically be greater than the sum of its parts, such targeted intervention can magnify variations in service and inconsistencies in other interactions.”

Single channel retailing.

Unlike omnichannel and multichannel sellers, other retailers choose to sell via a single channel only. Some sellers limit their activities to their own ecommerce storefront, while others rely on the Amazon marketplace, for example.

Different Avenues of Omnichannel

There are many different channels available for omnichannel organizations to participate in, from digital marketplaces to social media platforms.

Marketplaces.

An avenue in which omnichannel can excel is within different online marketplaces. 

By taking advantage of existing markets and successful companies, businesses can get a leg up on the competition while saving time and expenses.

Amazon

Perhaps the most famous example of a successful omnichannel-enabling marketplace is Amazon. Starting as a simple, online bookstore, Amazon has grown into the largest online marketplace in the world. 

By using Amazon as another channel, businesses can gain access to:

  • Approximately 2.45 billion monthly visitors, nearly three times as many as the next company. 
  • Amazon’s fast, reliable fulfillment center, regardless of where you sell. 
  • More than 200 million Amazon Prime members. 
  • One of the largest data gathering centers in the world.

Walmart

Walmart needs no introduction. As one of the largest retailers in the world, incorporating it into your omnichannel strategy can help businesses broaden their reach. 

  • Massive scale: Walmart.com has 120 million unique monthly visitors.
  • Fast delivery & returns: In-store pickup, free next-day and 2-day delivery options, easy return policy.
  • Seller tools: Huge investment in advertising, reporting and analytics.

Sellers on Walmart.com get 13-times more visitors per month compared to Amazon, making Walmart far less saturated by sellers versus other marketplaces. Walmart Marketplace sellers receive roughly 27,000 monthly visitors compared to 2,100 on Amazon.

Mercado Libre

Ecommerce sales are predicted to surpass the $100 billion mark in Latin America by the end of 2022.. With its rapid growth, this region should be a key consideration for your global ecommerce strategy. 

Known as the “Amazon of Latin America,” Mercado Libre can help businesses unlock the omnichannel opportunity across borders. 

  • Latin America’s No. 1 ecommerce marketplace.
  • Operating in 18 countries and reaching 65 million shoppers.

Wish

One of the most downloaded global shopping apps with over 120 active countries, Wish provides a free and smooth integration with account management support for BigCommerce merchants. 

This includes a dedicated account manager for onboarding, listing, merchandising and impression growth support.

Social commerce.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok provide another avenue for omnichannel organizations. Companies can expand their reach into previously untapped markets through digital advertisements on social media platforms and mobile apps. 

Facebook, for example, has its own marketplace system. Once used primarily by individual users, Facebook Marketplace has grown to include larger businesses. 

Facebook’s recent Meta rebranding is also significant for omnichannel-based organizations, as Meta will also be associated with the channel metaverse. The latest data shows that Meta brands reach a combined 3.6 billion people each month. Facebook alone reached an average of 2.9 billion people per month by the end of 2021.

A social media site like TikTok doesn’t allow vendors to sell directly from the platform. Instead, with an integration like BigCommerce’s with TikTok, businesses can sync their inventory so when a person clicks on the product, it takes them directly to that page on your site. 

With TikTok boasting 1 billion active users as of September 2021, that could be a boon for interested businesses. 

Organizations have a real opportunity with social commerce, and those that aren’t participating stand to miss out on a significant revenue stream, especially when considering that: 

  • 73% of shoppers across markets made a purchase in-store after finding or discovering the item on social media.
  • 66% of Gen Z Shoppers use social media to research a product before purchasing it.

Search.

With millions of people turning to Google every day, placing ads and listings on Google is the perfect growth opportunity to showcase your brand and products to the right shoppers at the right time.

  • 75% of global shoppers used a Google product in the past week to help with shopping.
  • 59% of shoppers surveyed say they use Google to research a purchase they plan to make in-store or online.
  • 76% of consumers enjoy making unexpected discoveries when shopping.

Shopping Behavior Has Shifted to an Omnichannel Retail Experience

In June 2021, eMarketer released its US ecommerce projections, estimating that ecommerce sales will reach nearly 24% of total retail sales by 2025.

Which of the following is not a benefit of a store channel shopping experience?

That acceleration due to COVID-19 “has forced everyone to operate at a much higher level of digital maturity,” said Sharon Gee, General Manager, Omnichannel at BigCommerce. “To succeed today, retailers need to put a stake in the ground and define a unified channel strategy from a digital and physical perspective.”

The move from offline to online channels wasn’t the only behavior shift. 

Consumers favored different products and services than usual, tried new brands or retailers, and engaged in the shopping process with new constraints — e.g., finding stores with curbside pickup or delivery options.

“Marketers got to see a new type of behavior in customers and if they were doing their homework, they got to understand something different about them,” said Andrew Kandel, head of sales for North America at Waze. “There will be a return to normalcy, but there will be an evolved customer that sees the world differently.”

Why is Omnichannel Commerce Valuable for Retailers?

In short, the acceleration in consumer behavior change in 2020 has made an omnichannel strategy more important than ever. 

In research conducted by BigCommerce and Retail Dive in 2020, 46% of retail executives said they planned to increase their investment in commerce retailing moving forward, compared to their plans prior to COVID-19.

Why? As Andrew Lipsman wrote in a May 2020 report on Frictionless Commerce: “The timeless truths of retail are that consumers will always want better prices, selection and convenience. With the internet having already driven major progress on the first two customer needs, attention is now turning to convenience.”

Ultimately, an omnichannel strategy can help drive increased sales and profitability. An eMarketer report found that streamlined digital experiences, curbside pickup and touchless checkout contributed to increased shopping frequency and incremental sales. 

Here are some of the factors that make omnichannel so valuable.

Meet customers where they are.

Consumers have been engaging in transactional activities for thousands of years. COVID-19 hasn’t stopped people from transacting — it’s just diverted and dispersed much of that activity across different channels.

Ecommerce became table stakes, social channels leveraged a captive audience to deploy new commerce features, and marketplace traffic surged.

Where customer journeys used to be relatively linear, today they’re anything but. People are discovering new brands and products in all kinds of new ways — Facebook and Instagram ads, Google Shopping, Amazon and other marketplaces, product reviews, in-store discovery, word of mouth and more. They may encounter your brand on their desktop computer, a television or a mobile device.

Showing up where your customers are makes the shopping journey more convenient for them. That convenience is more important than ever, in a world changed by COVID-19 — but then again, it always has been. According to a survey conducted by NRF prior to the pandemic, 83% of shoppers indicated that convenience while shopping was more important to them than five years prior.

“Shoppers want the logistics of their lives to be as simple as possible. A strong omnichannel strategy is sensitive to changing consumer behavior and puts the technology and operations in place to meet customers where they are — and where they want you to be,” said Sharon Gee, General Manager, Omnichannel at BigCommerce.

Stand out in a crowded playing field.

With more retailers vying for online attention, standing out is critical to ultimate success and requires a more resonant brand, better shopping experience and excellent service.

Businesses that are able to pivot to an omnichannel method of online shopping can immediately set themselves apart from other brands, especially those reluctant to leave the traditional brick-and-mortar store experience. 

With so many competitors in the retail space, why wouldn’t companies look for an edge anywhere they can? A move to omnichannel is an immediate separator. It can provide your existing customer base with a boost, while opening yourself up to a whole new market.

To truly stand out, you’ll need to adapt to new consumer needs and behaviors, and recalibrate your understanding of your target consumer. Some of what you’ve always known about your customers may have changed — use data to understand if you’ll need to rethink any of the following:

  • Product assortment
  • Sales channels
  • Advertising channels
  • Messaging

Doing this well and consistently will give you a better chance of weathering any unforeseen changes.

Optimize your business with data and analytics.

With such a sudden and drastic change in consumer behavior, some retailers may need to adjust their sales and marketing channel mix to optimize for the new reality. Understanding your data will help you identify where and how to focus your energy. Continuing to gather data at every touch point will be critical to making the decisions that elevate your business. Make sure you have a platform and solutions partners that make it easy to aggregate all your data sources and glean insights.

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