The Drifted Retail Journey

The retail journey we traditionally knew of has been changing ever since offline retail met the internet. A “Great Deal” changed its meaning to “Best Value” from “Best Price”, this got the retailers to focus on upping the customer experience.

The recent pandemic and the subsequent lockdown just escalated the process to a different scale. It forced companies not only to get online with their offerings but improve the virtual customer experience in ways that they had not planned.

This does not imply that the offline space can be ignored. Research shows that companies, who supported their online initiatives with physical stores, by offering facilities like order online or via Phone or WhatsApp and pick-up at the stores or avail a curbside pick-up, witnessed a higher increase in sales.

Post lockdown the study of the buying behaviour of customer shows, that as people return to in-person shopping at the physical stores, the online sales have dropped, but there is a difference.

While the lockdown period drove people to adopt online as the place of choice for their purchases, they have not yet let go of their offline penchant of going to a physical store. The same is reflected in the studies as markets open up people are going back to the stores to browse, engage and shop.

So, what has changed, well the Purchase journey as changed and changed quite irrevocably. The traditional funnel approach to making a purchase no longer exits.