Omnichannel retail in India

Abstract

With the objective to understand the impact of omnichannel retail in consumer decision-making process, the study was carried out in isolation for two similar (price range) product categories: smartphones and wearables(watches). The idea was to understand how consumers have different touchpoints on different channels during their purchase and then using these findings, what can be suitable recommendations for managers to leverage the omnichannel strategies. The focus was on consumer decision-making process and how it changes with the presence of multi-channel retail in place. There have been stark differences in how consumers preference changes with the change in product category. Also, there was an additional component added of urgent purchase to understand the changes in the preference of channel for a casual purchase against an impulse purchase. For smartphones, consumers have moved to online channel for their information search, evaluation and final purchase. Touch-and-feel is no longer a crucial factor in buying a smartphone, many of the consumers might have experienced through their peers’ handheld phones or it could be that most of the offerings are standardized in terms of screen size in the similar price range. For watches, touch-and-feel is still important and preferred channel of purchase is still exclusive stores because of assurance of quality and service. Social influence is not very significant in this purchase unless it is an urgent purchase. Lastly, consumers resort to offline channel for urgent purchase more in case of watches than in smartphones due to restricted variety of phones in the stores. Using the gathered findings, recommendations have been collated for the managers to leverage multiple channels and improve the overall customer experience. There are possibilities for brands to develop an integrated omnichannel retail for their products considering all the consumer touchpoints in their buying process. From the overall learnings, two caselets have been designed, one for each product category, which can be used for further research purposes or classroom teaching.