Definition: E-Retail & Connected Business

Definition: Connected Commerce

We speak of connected commerce, or E-Retail, as soon as digital technology is integrated into a physical store (known as Brick and Mortar), thus facilitating the intervention of salespeople and improving the customer’s shopping experience.

An E-Retailer has a physical store and an E-Shop, unlike a traditional retailer.

Connected commerce also, and above all, involves the presence of digital tools that can help the seller, such as connected tablets. These can help in two ways. They allow him to have access to the stock of his store, avoiding him to go to the stockroom for example (which allows him not to take the risk of losing a sale). They will also help him on the customer’s side, by having quicker access to a history and therefore to his buying habits.

These new tools also help the buyer. Indeed, we can easily imagine connected terminals replacing the cashier, and allowing to avoid waiting and improving the customer experience.

The interest of being an E-Retailer

E-Retail includes three essential notions: web-to-store, showrooming and digitalization of the point of sale.

Today, nearly 88% of customers first prospect on the Internet before finalizing a purchase in a store. This is what we call web-to-store. And it is because this proportion is constantly increasing, that it is essential for a retailer to link physical and digital.

Showrooming is opposed to web-to-store. Indeed, it is the fact of locating an article in a store to buy it later on the internet under better conditions: better prices, fast and free delivery and return, 24/7 purchases. Linking Retail and E-Retail will allow the retailer to no longer see the Internet as a competitor, but as a source of additional revenue.

Finally, the digitalization of the points of sale plays, as we have seen above, an essential role in E-Retail. A digitalized salesperson is more efficient in his sales and will have the possibility to create more links in his relationship with the customer, an automaton will be able to allow a customer to search for a product or even to allow the salesperson to order remotely, for him, an item that might be unavailable.

And some brands go even further. Indeed, the Maybelline chain in Shanghai is developing doubly connected stores: in the salesperson-customer relationship, but also in the customer-social network relationship. (Source: LSA)

A new advance for the new commerce!