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Top1. Introduction
India can, undoubtedly, be regarded as the ‘country of shopkeepers’ mainly because of the mushrooming organized as well as unorganized retail stores entirely across the length and breadth of the country. The definition of retailing says that ‘retailing facilitates consumption’ but if we talk about India, retailing probably means ‘consumption with convenience.’ To fulfill the changing customer preferences and provide them the best shopping experience, the Indian Retail Scenario has undergone a major visible transition in the country.
Indian retail economy has changed dramatically during the last two decades owing to the ongoing digitalization (Verhoef, Kannan & Inman, 2015). It has witnessed diverse forms of retail activities varying from traditional offline stores to online marketing and now the Omni-channel or multichannel retailing. The advent of mobile channel has also brought another major change in the retail environment (Rigby, 2011).
There are a number of factors that have geared up the exponential growth of these forms of retail activities like changes in customer preferences, increased purchasing power, need for better purchase experience, technological advancement, etc. Due to these developments the business models have changed, and the customers are behaving differently (Sorescu et al., 2011).
To counter these developments, many retailers are initiating multi-channel strategy by adding a new retail channel to their existing channel mix (Geyskens et al., 2002). According to Brynjolfsson et.al (2013), this development is affecting competitive strategies of the firms. In their opinion, new channels will break down old barriers like geographical boundaries and consumer ignorance. Hence, it will become crucial for retailers and their supply-chain partners to rethink their competitive strategies. This decision relates to the brick-and-mortar retailers, as well as to the online retailers, who have to think whether they should be present offline too (Avery et al., 2012).
The evolution of retailing from a single channel is explained by the need to overcome existing format limitations such as the size of store, expansion in new markets through electronic channels, increasing sales by cross-channel interactions and gaining valuable insights into consumer behavior through the Internet (Kent et al., 2016). Retailers increasingly engage with consumers through a diversity of touchpoints including advertising, peer-to-peer encounters and instore communications (Baxendale, Macdonald & Wilson, 2015). The rapid growth in social media has created new forms of interaction with consumers whilst disrupting conventional models of marketing communication (Kent et al., 2016). Consequently, by using a combination of channels, retailers can better satisfy their customers through the provision of information and services.
The retail environment in India dates back to centuries when barter system was the only mode of exchange. Since then, the retailing activities have advanced with momentum and have stretched across the rural, urban and metro cities. Slowly and gradually, shopping interest started heading towards online platform due to increased digital literacy and easy access to the internet. But we cannot deny the fact that every aspect comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.
Traditional retail, too, had few advantages over online retail like personal interaction, touch and feel the product, trust and familiarity with the retailer, etc. but there are few areas which could not be rectified despite varying attempts for improvisation, such as, deeper variety, attractive display of products, price advantage and special promotion offers. These concerns led to the advent of online retail in India during the era of 90s.
Initially, the online marketplaces sold their products through the company’s website, later the app model was also added to enhance customer satisfaction, but this could not bring a halt to the expectations of the highly informative and convenience seeking customers, thus, this was the impetus for the evolution of Omni-channel or multichannel retailing.