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SAMEER SAMAT: E-commerce has really caught a lot of people
off guard, actually, in the world of retail.
It is something that certainly has been huge potential.
But actually, if you look at the sales volume of e-commerce
over the last few years, there are a number of retailers who
have done quite well.
But the reality is 92% to 94% of retail is still done
offline today.
What e-commerce has really done is it has changed the way
users interact with brands and the way users
interact with stores.
They do a lot of their research online.
And then they often transition into the store to actually
complete the purchase.
So it's not as much about the transactions online as it is
education and connecting with users at the place where,
really, they are every day, which is
frankly the online world.
I think there are a couple examples of companies that
have done an extremely good job of connecting the online
world and their offline presence.
One of those companies, for example, is Best Buy.
Best Buy has a wonderful multi-channel presence, in
particular their physical store locations.
People love going there because of the service.
People love going there because of the selection.
But the online website is actually quite useful.
There are high resolution images of all the different
things that they offer.
There are reviews and product information that is sometimes
hard to get in the physical world in the store.
And what they've done that's really nice is they've
connected those two worlds together.
And they've done things like have a Twitter channel and a
variety of other mechanisms, where on your mobile device
right in the store, you can access all that great
information that's online.
So it blends those two worlds together.
You can also ask questions of people who aren't even in the
store there but who are somewhere online, who are
experts, who work for Best Buy, who can give you advice
on that camera you're standing right in front of.
I think that's really smart.
I think one thing that businesses do with e-commerce
that is a mistake is they treat it
as a separate business.
When you look at e-commerce, it's really an extension of
the very same brand that people are used to seeing and
visiting when they come to your physical store.
And when you treat it as a separate business, run by a
separate part of your organization, what tends to
happen is the experience online is not necessarily on
brand or on message with the experience that
you have in the store.
And you get, what I tend to call, seams between these two
experiences.
So if I go and buy something online, I should be able to
return it in the store.
And that should be a positive experience that that brand
offers me and an advantage of that brand having both an
online and offline presence.
When those two are separated, often by organizational
divides, what ends up happening is you can't make
some of those things happen.
And that's a big mistake.
I think the way that e-commerce has evolved over
the last eight to 10 years is I think we need to drop the E.
E-commerce is, I think, a term that was used to describe
something that was brand new that no one completely
understood.
What has happened though is really the consumer doesn't
think about this in terms of e-commerce and commerce.
They think of it as I'm going to go shop.
And they don't pay attention to whether they're online or
in the offline world, because they've got their phone with
them at all times.
And if they don't have their phone with them, they
certainly have their tablet.
And they're always connected.
And it needs to be one seamless experience that we
think of holistically.
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