Mr Punit Modhgil, Founder-Director, Octane.in presented the Report : The State of Retail e-marketing in India: Insights from the India Retail e-Marketing Study 2013 @ ReTechCon 2013.
The key findings by this survey are:
The interactive session, “Use IT or Lose IT”, presented by Mr Vikram Idnani, Head-IT, Trent Ltd and Mr Siju Narayan, Smarter Commerce Lead, IBM, grab the audiences’ attention instantly with presentation of real life experience by retailers when it comes to dealing with technology platform.
The experience can be outside-in when an outside agent, here in this case an IT vendor, came to rescue in terms of helping in utilization of unexplored features of a software application. The moral of the story here is proper use of technology propels growth, materializing the expectations you have for the application.
Here the situation is all about a problem a retailer is facing and how internal discussion ultimately leads to identifying a technology platform that results in the betterment of the situation. The moral is solution was in internal discussion leads to rectification with the help of outside agent.
Make sure that users know how to use it
Make sure users use it
Keep asking: “What more?”
Think “Low cost start-up, long term use”
]]>
Decoding this concept was the objective of the panel discussion on – Engaging the Empowered Customer – Omni Channel Retailing. Panelists for the session included – D. Baskaramoorthy, Vice President Sales, Posiflex Technology; Kashyap Mehta, Head – ecommerce, Infiniti Retail Ltd.; Manoj Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, edabba.com; S Natrajan, Country Business Manager, Embedded Markets, Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd.; Vikran Potdar, Head – IT, Big Cinemas and Siju Narayan, Smarter Commerce Lead, IBM.
Kashyap, “Providing a single source of truth to the customer constitutes Omni Channel retail. It is not about providing an alternative channel to your customer to shop but it is about building and integrating the entire ecosystem of the various channels available.”
Kumar went on to add, “It is all about putting the customer at the centre and serving him through whatever channels he chooses to shop with. The final agenda is to give him an experience of shopping from a single ‘company / brand.”
The panelists were unanimous in their views – that offering an omni channel retailing experience was where all the retailers aspired to be. But there are several many inter-relating factors to achieve this. One of the major factor rested with having a seamless internet penetration in the country and once this would be resolved, India could be at par with other evolved Western / developed countries which had majority of their shoppers integrating the online and offline medium to shop.
Touching upon the subject of customer loyalty, Potdar’s view was that the Entertainment industry was different from Retail. In retail, having a loyalty program was almost a matter of “hygiene” with most customers expecting a “standard” bouquet of rewards. In the entertainment industry – loyalty was driven by geography – customers are usually not willing to venture to single screen theaters unless they are within a convenient travel radius.
Another interesting point of discussion revolved around the changing shopping habits of consumers and whether access to organized retail has created a greater number of impulse purchases. Kumar felt that with ecommerce, purchases were moving to an ‘aspirational’ or ‘dream’ purchase plane. He said, “Exposure in various forms is increasing consumption today!”
Narayan attributed the advent and influence of social media in shaping purchase behavior. Internationally 74 percent shoppers accept recommendations from their social network for upcoming purchase.
The panel concluded by discussing the role of technology in winning customer loyalty. Potdar highlighted the importance internal customer satisfaction being of prime importance as according to him, an empowered front end staff is in a better position to ensure that customer in turn is empowered.
]]>
The session “Expect more, Pay Less”: Payment Solutions in India was moderated by Meheriar Patel, CTO & Head, eCommerce, Globus Stores Pvt Ltd. The eminent panelists were Deepa M. Thomas, eCommerce Evangelist, eBay India; Ashish Hemrajani, Founder & CEO, Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.; Pramod Jajoo, CTO, BigBasket.com; Dewang Neralla, Director & CEO, Atom Technologies and Naveen Surya, MD, ItzCash Card Limited.
“Three statements define us: “Jugaad”, “Cash is King;” and “Sasta, Sundar, Tikau” – Dewang kicked off the panel discussion on Payment Solutions in India at ReTechCon 2013.
“In India cash is still king. 90% of all monetary transactions in India are cash.” “Payment solutions enable those who don’t have a debit / credit card – which is 80% of the population in India. This includes 16 to 20 year olds in urban centers, who may not have independent credit cards or bank accounts. The first generation payment solution was the digital wallet – as a customer, you went to a bank filled out a form and were able to access you money digitally. This was not unlike a debit card, but you didn’t need a bank account; and you got access to your money through an ATM. “
“Some options in the market are for example what is used by ebay – the platform is called “paisapay”. It functions like an escrow i.e. merchant gets payment only after the consumer gets the product. To give you a sense of how fast the market has adopted – in 2004, 15% of our transactions on ebay were online via paisapay – today, in 2013 its 95%.”
“Till 2002 – 99% of transactions from the call center. No debit / credit card penetration. We were a call center and delivery company. Even in those days, with payment systems being rudimentary at best, we could still profile and tell a lot about consumer behavior. For example – there was a customer in Delhi – who would have tickets for family style entertainer movies delivered to an address which was different from the one given when wanted to view “adult” entertainment – a clear “tell” that he was – shall we say “a colorful personality”. Today 17% of all our transactions are via the mobile, and more than 70% are on the web. We are integrated with 32 payment gateways – we are agnostic to the solution provider. When transactions with one gateway taper off or fall, we auto-switch and load balance.
The main reason for payment failures is usually – server to server. In other words, unstable data connections – between the user and the payment gateway lead to dropped transactions.
The panel felt that the Reserve Bank of India has played a catalyst’s role in upgrading the payment infrastructure in the country (from ECS to NEFT to RTGS platforms) – given the many complexities of geography, Telecom density, telephony etc. Fraud rates have come down significantly (especially in international credit card transactions) in the last 10 years – and the customer does not have a problem with trusting online-payment mechanisms. This is in contrast to several other emerging markets (e.g. Russia, Brazil) where adoption has been hampered by customer concerns around security.
“Merchants should be spending their time strategizing on how to better the shopping experience, their merchandise mix, how to increase sales, how to create loyalty, what social media strategy to use – they should not have to worry about payment solutions”.
The panel felt that, from a long term, structural perspective, alternative payment platforms were not healthy. In other markets, some of these platforms have been associated with less than positive press – e.g. money laundering / terrorism connections.
Dewang Neralla, Director & CEO, atom technologies: “Structurally speaking, over time, the market should move to an acquirer centric model. In the past rates were based on an “issuer centric” model – but again, from the perspective of creating scale – it’s a move that should take place.”
]]>
The session was moderated by Vikram Idani, Head-IT, Trent Ltd. The eminent panelists were Amit Bhatia, Head-Retail Solutions, NEC India Pvt Ltd; Asif Merchant, MD, Catwalk Worldwide; Manoj Gor, Regional Senior Manager, PVR; Rahul Puri, AVP IT & CISO, Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd; Ranjan Sharma, Head-IT & Supply Chain, Bestseller Retail India; Uzwal Kumar Chatterjee, VP & Head IT, Mahindra Retail Pvt Ltd.
Mr Idani initiated the discussion asking each panelist
What is the moment of truth for you?
For Mr Puri it’s customers hitting POS, placing orders and paying before the counter; for Mr Sharma since Bestseller is in the space of fast fashion the stores need to exude freshness, be it in merchandise or window; for Mr Chatterjee Mahindra Retail-owned Mom & Me is in specialized retail space so brand awareness amongst the customers is the moment of truth; for Mr Merchant the Indian brands need to wake up to deliver services on par with international standard.
Young generation, who are buyers of fast fashion, do not like to wait to check out. The problem intensifies during EOS (End of Season) sale, but Mr Chatterjee shared that that time can be utilized by developing interesting mobile apps for in-store promotion.
Mr Bhatia shared how queue bursting solutions worked for PVR, saving 40-50% of time, increasing 40-50% sales.
Self check-out kiosks and hand-held terminals are some solutions for queue bursting but do they fit in every store format?
The panelists opined that for some high-end store it works but not for grocery stores where customers visiting are not that tech-savvy.
Instead, omni-channel retailing is one effective solution for queue bursting. Mr Bhatia stated that even Walmart is winding its self-kiosk checking out services; it’s not successful for Ikea in the US. But Mr Merchant felt differently. According to him, it’s not convenience but discount online attracts customers.
]]>