Although I had my first taste of ecommerce as far back as 1998, over the years I’ve preferred to shop at brick-and-mortar stores – at least in India – because the offline channel shields me from the intrinsic delivery risk of the marketplace model and saves me the friction of transacting online with credit cards.
Accordingly, when I had to buy a few things recently, I headed over to the high street and a couple of malls in Pune, India, which is where I live.
Much to my dismay, I found that:
- Two stores had shut down (CROMA @ Pulse Mall, Venus @ Magnum Mall)
- Two others didn’t have what I wanted (Microsoft Mouse, Belkin Power Trail)
- The salesman at one store (The Mobile Store) couldn’t understand why I was asking him if I could install apps from Google Play Store on a certain Android smartphone (Nokia X).
Since I didn’t have the time and energy to continue my search at other brick-and-mortar stores, I bought all these items online.
As you’d have inferred by now, I didn’t jettison physical stores because of price. Instead, my decision to defect to ecommerce was driven by the following non-price problems ailing brick-and-mortar stores:
- Spiraling cost of overheads – rather than low margin on merchandise – threatening the viability of many retail businesses (More in Retail Winners & Losers Amidst Skyrocketing Real Estate Costs)
- Stock outs (Not the first time it has happened: Stores Have Themselves To Blame For ‘Showrooming’)
- Ignorant store attendants who don’t know that many “Android” mobile devices can’t access Play Store (Nokia X and B&N Nook Color are just two examples of “closed ecosystem” Android devices that support only Android apps published on their proprietary app stores).
I’m not a spendthrift but price didn’t enter the picture in any of my aforementioned purchase decisions.
It is dangerous to jump to conclusions on the basis of a datapoint of one but brick-and-mortar retailers are mistaken if they think people shop online only to get lower prices.
Even at their current price levels, physical stores have a reasonably good shot at retaining their loyal customers by fixing their inventory problems, enhancing the shopping experience and otherwise setting their house in order.
Hope they’re listening!