[New Opportunities in the Epidemic] How does the retail industry break through through O2O?
Affected by the epidemic in the past year, online shopping has developed by leaps and bounds, and consumers’ buying habits have shifted from offline to online. Life department stores, which relied on physical store sales in the past, have finally caught up with the pace of digital transformation and become the best-selling category of goods on online shopping platforms today. It is not difficult to imagine that Hong Kong’s retail industry will be hit by an unprecedented impact in 2020.
According to the Census and Statistics Department, the value of total retail sales in the physical retail industry last year fell by 24.3% compared to 2019; the total sales volume fell by 25.5%, the largest annual decline on record. However, does this mean that the value and living space of physical stores are gradually shrinking?
Convenient and diversified online shopping will provide consumers with a good shopping experience. Coupled with the maturity of electronic payment, it is predicted that online shopping sales will continue to grow steadily. On the other hand, with the slowdown of the epidemic and the reopening of physical stores, it is believed that many online consumers will return to physical stores in response to the unique convenience of Hong Kong. How can each retail brand master appropriate operation and sales strategies to maintain business development?
The new online and offline retail model (O2O-Online to Offline) will become an effective solution and trend. If the store owner can effectively integrate the resources and data of the online store (online) and the physical store (offline), and complement each other, I believe it can bring greater business opportunities to the brand.
Expand online sales to reach more potential customers
According to a survey conducted by the social management platform Hootsuite, more than 43% of respondents browsed and used social platforms more often during the epidemic. Retail brands can share offline physical store information and promotional offers with online users through social platforms, convert original offline consumption into online orders, and reduce the impact of social distancing measures on the flow of physical stores.
Store owners can better use the degree of interaction of posts (such as like, share, leave a message), grasp consumer feedback on products, and constantly improve products to make them closer to their needs. Using online data analysis can allocate digital marketing resources more accurately and reach a huge potential customer base.
At the same time, compared with offline stores, social platforms allow shopkeepers to spread brand concepts more widely, and through continuous updating of product status, they can have a closer relationship with existing or potential consumers and strengthen their brand loyalty.
Improve the logistics system and fully cooperate with O2O sales
To achieve online and offline sales, a logistics system that can integrate online store and physical store operations is even more necessary. The WeImperial system tailor-made your own website platform for you, effectively synchronously recording real-time inventory and order status. Our offline logistics assistants have the ability to support different forms of order processing and delivery (such as online ordering, door-to-door delivery, offline pickup, or physical store replenishment, etc.) to meet your different retail needs.
In addition, the WeImperia system has an online store docking function, which can reflect the status of orders in real-time, ensuring that consumers can receive products quickly and accurately regardless of online or offline shopping so that retail brands can effectively use the new O2O operation model to create more Big business opportunity.
