What if, I say brick & mortar retailing is here to stay and flourish more than or at least as much as online retailing? Wondering, is it possible! Thinking, no way, online retailing is the future and brick & mortar retailing is becoming a thing of the past and will die soon.

In my opinion, there is a combat going on between online retailing and brick and mortar retailing. I would say that, while online retailing is young, energetic and full of potential, brick & mortar retailing is mature, experienced and learned one.

For brick and mortar retailing to win over online retailing,  in my opinion, it has to use its decades of experience, learning from itself and learning from what is making online retailing tick.


Here are four points for brick & mortar to take care of for it to flourish and win over online retailing:

  1. Keep and enhance the good stuff of brick & mortar retailing (Social aspect, Fun, touch, feel, etc.) - It is an activity and indeed a fun one, to go with friends and family to a retail store for shopping. It should be leveraged by brick & mortar stores to attract and retain more and more of its customers. How about running some fun events to add on to the fun element? Leverage celebrities, artists and others to make sure that th events are appealing to the customer. The touch and feel of a product that a customer gets of a product in retail store is amazing and it’s something that you indeed miss in online retailing. In a retail store, make sure that the products are available in a way that a customer can touch & feel in the most comfortable way.

  1. Learn from online retailing and adopt the good stuff - what makes it tick (Variety of assortments, Ease of browsing and locating products, Product reviews) - In online retailing, the best part of it is the variety of products and how easy it is to browse them and find the one of your choice. The features to select products based on price range, size, brands, and other aspects are indeed targeting the right set of products to right customer. The features to sort by price or popularity is another features that online shoppers like and use heavily. So, how can we bring the easy browsing feature in brick & mortar retailing? This is where, we need the amalgamation of technology and brick & mortar retail store, for the experience of browsing and locating the products. Google glass, indeed is an option but google glass and like of it are thing of little farther future. But, going with what we have now, with smartphone users increasing, an app that can be used to browse products for a particular store and locate the products of ones choice, is indeed useful for the customer. With app, tailored for a particular store, you are able to bring the online features of online retailing to a brick & mortar retail store. In addition, the app can show the product reviews etc. On top of this, the app should be able to scan the products barcode to get more details about the product, product reviews, recommendation, checkout-on-th-go, etc.

  1. Easy Return, Fast checkout -  When we buy a product, we do want an option for easy replacement and refund. It’s important for a customer and it gives customer that satisfaction and assurance of the purchase. In my opinion, brick & mortar store should definitely, provide a service of easy return by a reverse pickup facility within a city range. It will create an additional brownie points in the customer mind that would make the customers make more purchases and be satisfied of the service of brick & mortar retail store. One of the things, that a customer doesn’t like in brick & mortar store is the wait time at the checkout. To tackle this, there must of a self checkout, kiosk-based checkout, app based checkout on the go option for the customer in the store.

  1. Price, Coupons and Freebies - At the end, the price factor matters the most for a customer. The product, in brick & mortar store, must be cheaper or at least be at the same cost as that of in online retailing. The brick & mortar store, hence, should aspire to increase the volume of sales rather than the profit per product if it has to compete with online retailing. The freebies are another factor to attract and retain the customer in the brick & mortar store. The store, with this, could target to advertise/promote third party products and help cross-sell its own product or the products of its partnering third parties. For example, on purchase of products worth more than 1000 INR, if I am given a 50INR worth of voucher of Mac Donald. I would be happy to receive it and most likely, I would buy some more stuff in Mac Donald. And so, Mac Donald gets the more footfall, to whom, Mac Donald can cross-sell its products.

At the end, let us first accept the fact that brick & mortar retailing is here to stay and then, work on the above aspects to renovate the brick &  mortar retailing in order to stay here and flourish more than or at least as much as online retailing.