The Rise of Phygital Commerce in Retail
For years we, as consumers, have seen brands using new technologies in a smart way to entice us to buy, buy more or buy again from that same brand…
Whilst it is clear that digital sales have dominated purchases, the need to experience a brand, touch a fabric or look at a garment colour still firmly has its place with physical retail stores. This is precisely what the emergence of digital commerce is branching in. Consumers, across many demographics, have found themselves force to rely on e-commerce platform to pretty much source everything from groceries, to health, clothing etc.
Phygital Commerce is a new economic model, inspired by e-commerce but applied in physical stores. Phygital marries both the online and offline environments by taking the best aspects from each space to create an elevated customer experience. In order terms, Phygital takes the best components from the digital retail experience into Face 2 Face environments. It is an investment that enable retailers to get people to interact with the brand, the product and getting more footfall into a brick-and-mortar environments. This approach is a good way to get a 360 visibility of a shoppers’ preferences across the multiple touchpoints they interact with the brands. Millennials are deemed to be the demographics that best fit in this new way of consuming brands.
Technology advancement is clearly one of the area that is facilitating the combination of physical and digital elements into retail.
Through the use of interactive devices available in stores such as terminals, mobile phones and tablets, or even phygital merchandising retailers, retailers can create a completely connected physical and digital storefront, which in turns boost sales. It also presents other opportunities such as:
1. Money saving – reducing the need to hold a stock instore and therefore improving the retailers stock rotation. With the infinite choices/options available online, physical stores are quite often challenged to keep their stock afloat in store.
2. Increase of sales with the opportunity to convert a POS sale transaction into an online transaction by connecting the range/stock of products available to scroll conveniently through a digital devise from stock straight to customers
3. Consistent experience across the on-offline channel driving more customer satisfaction, which can turn into repeat business to brand loyalty.
With the uncertainty still surrounding physical store, one may wonder if phygital commerce may well be the opportunity for brick and mortar to bounce back? To be followed…
