Multi Channel selling means selling your products on multiple platforms, including e Commerce platforms, various marketplaces, and offline.
According to the PWC report 2016, Results shows that 54% buy products online weekly or monthly, 34% agree that their mobile phone will become their main purchase tool and 67% say that either reading or writing social media reviews and comments influences their online shopping behavior.
Nowadays showing your products online is as important as showing your product in a retail store. According to the report of PWC 2015 (Total Retail 2015: Retailers and the Age of Disruption) below is the percentages which shows the importance of web rooming as well as show rooming.
“Web rooming” is just as important as “Show rooming”
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Reasons for multi channel selling
- Customer reach:- Multi-channel presence gives power to reach out to maximum number of customers at the remotest parts of the country. Even if a brand is based out of just one city, it can be omnipresent in entire country by just being online. This means more connect with customers, higher reach and higher sales for sure.
- Customer Communication:- Doing outdoor marketing in a city to drive customers to your retail store of a city? How about doing that digitally at same cost and reaching out to more customers, for whom online shopping is easier with just a few clicks? When you are on multiple channels, it is easier to spread more about your promotions, new launches, discounts, etc. Your billing counter or Customer support counter cannot support thousands of customers in a minute, but your website can.
- Multi channel Inventory distribution is easier now:- If worries about overselling or underselling your inventory were not letting you go online, there are tools available to ensure your inventory is automatically distributed on multiple channels and is updated as well on all channels after an order comes from any one of them. Try Paxcom eGenie for this.
- Following the trend :- Your customers are everywhere , so should you be. Dont lose out on any potential customer from any city, any area to your customers who can be selling on multiple channels. One lost customer to competition, with network effect can lead to hundreds and thousands of lost customers!
- Sales:- Easiest to say, though not as easy to operate for sure (unless you have a technology catalyst), multi channel presence will get you more sales.
As appealing it may seem, you need to be more careful about your online brand image when selling online. Customers are very sensitive to brand or seller reviews. If you want to reap maximum benefits of multi channel sales, ensure you keep focus on your online reviews!
