Retailers add click factor to make bricks-and-mortar tick

Retailers in Asia-Pacific have been turning traditional stores into ‘bricks-and-clicks’, offering ‘click-andcollect’ services. Some of them are also engaging convenience stores as their network of in-store pick-up points to attract the new generation of busy consumers, says a new report by Euromonitor, along with KPMG, titled ‘Retail Asia-Pacific Top 500’. Despite what retail gurus and futurists may predict, in-store retailing in 2015 still accounted for 93% of sales in Asia-Pacific.

In India, the major trends observed were:
Large-format stores become popular: Both grocery and non-grocery retailers registered higher footfalls for large-format stores in 2015 as large format retail outlets typically offer a large variety of brands and price ranges, which is preferred by a lot of consumers. Large-format stores also provide consumers with much larger options to choose from, which has helped to increase sales as well.



The majority of leading retailers have both online and offline presence: Some 70% of leading retailers in the country were present in both online and offline channels in 2015. Traditional retailers are no longer the leading players in India. In fact, companies which are technologically advanced and interact with the consumer base via both online and offline media were the most successful ones during the year.

Omnipresence drives growth of retailing: Omnipresence became a leading strategy for success among retailers in 2015. This is expected to continue over the 2016-2020 forecast period as well. Consumers’ loyalty towards brands and retail channels will continue to decline. Therefore, retailers need to be available across multiple channels, giving consumers greater choice.

Mobile internet key growth driver: Mobile Internet retailing in India saw particularly strong growth in 2015 due to the growth of Internet-enabled smartphones in the country and small-screen viewing prior to purchase of any product or service. Furthermore, mobile applications, which allow consumers to shop on the go, also fuelled the growth of mobile Internet retailing in 2015.