Importance of Employing Omnichannel Strategy in a Business

Omnichannel Strategy
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Omnichannel Strategy
Brand W, a fictitious Indian fashion brand, absolutely needed to employ the omnichannel strategy to help its business. Omnichannel is an approach whereby a brand provides its customers with a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels and mediums. The experience is seamless from a mobile application to a desktop or mobile device to a physical store. The need to use this approach was evident due to several factors. W already had loyal a customer base that it had built over the years (Mathew et. al., 2018). Apart from that, it had numerous women brands under its belt, had built numerous stores across the country, and had introduced brilliant complementary offerings. It already had its website up and running and had already sold a few items off it. The brand had already developed eco-friendly products that were scalable. W’s products had an international feel. This in turn was met by huge demand from the Indian diaspora. All these factors, with regards to the brand, were sufficient to cultivate a healthy presence across all platforms.
Other factors, from outside the brand, that provided solid evidence of the need to use the omnichannel strategy were several (Mathew et. al. 2018). India was experiencing rapid internet penetration and the adoption of e-commerce was high. This created a surge in online trading and digitally connected customers were forcing retailers to engage with them on multiple forums. The Indian customers’ buying behaviors had changed a lot mainly due to greater urbanization, lifestyle contributions, and there were more women in the workforce who now commanded better salaries. The Indian customer had also become very enlightened and needed brands that would provide long-term relationships. The customers believed these long-term relationships would be strengthened by loyalty points. Creating a system of rewarding loyalty and coming up with a loyalty reward program was something Brand W would do without breaking a sweat. Despite the strong position the brand had with regards to being able to adopt the omnichannel strategy, it had a few risks to mitigate against. On the online platforms, there was stiff competition from online aggregators who viciously pushed their labels over independent brands. On the other hand, Indian e-commerce platforms demanded hefty margins from the apparel category and this would lead to negative effects on the overall profit margins for the brand. In short, the strides it had made to ensure it could be able to have a successful transition to the omnichannel strategy were far more significant than the risks that lay in wait. This goes to further cement the fact that Brand W indeed needed to adopt the omnichannel strategy to stay afloat strongly. A move from offline-dominant to an omnichannel strategy would have called for W to rework its strategy, for instance, towards pricing and promotional marketing. Though challenging, these would have paid off in the long run.
The omnichannel strategy creates a connection between the offline and online world of businesses. It has a lot of benefits when adopted correctly. It may be difficult to set up, comes with a lot of risks, and may even call for major changes to be done by a brand but it is always worth it in the end. The benefits that are associated with the omnichannel strategy are numerous. To begin with, the strategy offers better data collection and analysis (Commercetools, n.d.). This is made possible by the availability of systems like cookies, social media, loyalty programs just to mention a few. One may then analyze consumer trends and afterward use the information to formulate better campaigns that ultimately lead to higher conversion rates. It also guarantees a better customer experience because the customer is able to place an order from an application on their phone, ask questions about the program through a chat function, choose the point of delivery, and pay for it seamlessly. This deeper interaction with the customer also ensures that the right information flows to them. Omnichannel ensures greater brand visibility as brands can place their messages across all platforms they have and this ensures a seamless and personalized customer experience. The more consistently a customer encounters a brand the more visible it becomes and the higher the chances...