Retail Dude

Social media tools like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz etc. introduced a fun element in teaching. Don’t be surprised I am not going to talk about education in India. Actually these tools helped India to raise its computer literacy rate from single digit to double digit, which is one of the important factor to promote etailing in India. I will give credit to IRCTC & Makemytrip for making Indian consumer more comfortable in doing online transactions, but will appreciate social media tools how they boosted “e” presence in India.

The volume of online sale is still less but this mode of shopping is catching popularity through word of mouth, and retailers are bidding on ecommerce growth. Thus we can see “Future group” online shopping destination as www.futurebazaar.com, “Shoppers stop” virtual shop as www.Shopperstop.com and www.themobilestore.in of “The mobile store”.

By the way India has its virtual stores since mid 90’s, and the players like “IndiaMart” and “Fabmall” now known as “Indiaplaza” are among those who established a stepping stone for ecommerce in India. Now we have many such online shops where you can find anything ranging from furniture to T-Shirts and books to gadgets such as www.homeshop18.com, www.shopmania.in, shopping @ sify, rediff and indiatimes, www.retailsdirect.com, www.indiavarta.com, eshop.webindia123.com etc but they lack leading brands. They have “Your brand dual sim phone” but not a “Philip DVD player”, but with retailers opening their online store things are changing but they still have very limited merchandise on their online shop. I hope soon we can see range of branded merchandise from Levis Jeanswear to Titan watch.

After doing some research I was able to draw a profile of Indian shopper - An Indian Online shopper is a “male” of age between “18- 35”, is a graduated doing job and prefer to shop from its work location. Women still prefer brick and mortar store and don’t want to miss trails and store ambience.

Recently Google also launched their shopping tool for google.co.in domain where you can search your product and can see results from all this online shops. All these things indicating a detour for shopping – an online store – new shopping avenue for Indian Shoppers.

- Prateek Katiyar

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It is considered as a part of CRM but actually it will empower retailers to uplift their bottom lines. The new trend is here and it’s known as Social Commerce. It’s not long back when we heard about e-commerce and m-commerce, many retailers are still experimenting and evaluating these concept. And this Social commerce is an add-on to these previous concepts. In the market there is lot of buzz and talk about social commerce but some analysts are predicting that the concept will take over market by early 2011. But you can visualize some minor elements of social commerce even now like rating system on most shopping websites, customer’s testimonials and their blog hosted on retailer’s website etc.

Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang told CRM magazine about the past, present, and future state of the social Web, and he categorized it into five overlapping eras –

1. The era of social relationships: Beginning in the mid-1990s, people signed up for online profiles and connected with their friends to share information.

2. The era of social functionality:As it exists today, social networking is more than just a platform for “friending,” but one that can support a broader array of what Owyang calls “social interactive applications.” However, identities are essentially disconnected silos within individual sites.

3. The era of social colonization:By late 2009, technologies such as OpenID and Facebook Connect will begin to break down the barriers of social networks and allow individuals to integrate their social connections as part of their online experience, blurring the lines between networks and traditional sites.

4. The era of social context:In 2010, sites will begin to recognize personal identities and social relationships to deliver customized online experiences. Social networks will become the “base of operation for everyone’s online experiences.”

5. The era of social commerce: In approximately two years, social networks will be more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems, as individual identities and relationships are built on this platform. Brands will serve community interests and grow based on community advocacy as users continue to drive innovation in this direction.

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-Prateek Katiyar

Source: CRM magazine & Forrester Research

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