Store specific coupons - no longer a big deal.

Mobile Coupons are an effective tool to get shoppers into the store, or on their app or web-store. However, this effective tool has been out of reach of small neighborhood merchants. The process of issuing m-coupons to consumers, tracking them, redeeming them etc. is generally out of the capability of independent merchants who cannot afford the services of specialized marketing agencies or the costs of the required high-end technology. 

AaramShop has been able to address this challenge. We have opened up the opportunity to our partner merchants to use their mobile app (AaramOn), to publish, push and then deem coupons which are specific to their store. We have enabled this as a free to use feature on our merchant app (and across the entire tech stack). 

We have taken things a step further to add a little more aaram for our shoppers. They now have multiple options to redeem the coupons issued to them - on their app, on the web-store or when they walk into their neighborhood store. 

Here is a video to explain how simple it is for the retailers to deploy their store coupons. 

AaramOn POS Solution - going beyond "billing @ store"

AaramOn is a technology innovation for retailers of all sizes, but speciaclally designed keeping in view the business needs of the independent retailers, and ensures they can use it as a dependable tool to grow their business. Retailers use AaramOn as a mainstream and modern alternative to traditional POS terminals which have been designed to address the single issue of “billing @ store”, and are expensive to implement. 

AaramOn supports multi-device integration.

Business demands are more complex and are ever evolving. AaramOn has been built with the smart phone at its core and hence it ensures full integration on the AaramOn app, enabling the business manager to have all relevant business indicators available to him at all times. It further integrates web & app based orders, tracks the entire delivery and payment process. It comes bundled with CRM and store-market on the finger tips, while at the same time it also does the “billing @ store”.

AaramOn POS has been designed in a way that it can either operate on the cloud or in the unforeseen event where the network connectivity between the POS and cloud breaks, AaramOn with its native database ensures business continuity. The application, which supports both windows and android OS, allows the retailer to continue business as usual and ensures data integrity when the connection is restored. Give it a try here.

General Trade & its evolution - our take on it.

General Trade in India (and a number of other emerging economies) continues to be at the forefront of the grocery business, with as much as 90% of the business flowing thru them. 

AaramOn - blurring the difference.

However, the very nature of the general trade is rapidly changing with outlets adopting the modern business methods, be it store design, self-service, methods of stocking etc, while at the same time continuing to service their consumers with finer aspects like quick service etc. 

The change is gradual, but given the huge numbers ... even when a small percentage of 13 million retailers upgrade the impact is significant. 

Our experience at AaramShop, makes us believe that biggest change would be in the way the retailers adopt to technology in the next 1 to 2 years, and the technology that would lead would be mobile based and will help the local retailer connect with his local consumer, with ease and effectiveness. 

With this increased adoption to technology, the difference between "modern" and "general" trade seems to blur out.

The retailers now have access to an awesome solution in the form of AaramOn to get digital in a meaningful manner.

State of Grocery Home Delivery Report : India

As part of our constant endevour to understand the evolving trends & shopping behavior of grocery

consumers, AaramShop undertook an exhaustive research across 150 stores in the Delhi & NCR. The core objective was to understand the entire scope of "home delivery" within the FMCG segment and its current and future impact on brands. 

The research results are in and they indicate that Home Orders at the neighborhood retail stores are starting to become very significant indeed.  This, of course, has significant implications for brands from the following points:

a.    How to influence the customer when she is planning her monthly purchase

b.    How to influence her when she is placing the order

c.    How to influence her when she is getting the delivery

We found that 60% of the shops surveyed had more than 40% of their business coming from the Home Orders. Y-axis represents the % of business via home orders.

If you are interested to get hold of the full report, please send me an email or a tweet.

Related articles

• The changing profile of Indian retailers & AaramShop.
• Point of Sale has moved - from the store to the consumers' home.
• Mobile Disrupting Path to Purchase.
• Simplified Online Plan for FMCG brands in India.

Neighbourhood kirana shop is spiffing things up.

Business Today examines how the traditional trade stores (general trade stores) are managing the challenge posed by the large format modern trade outlets in markets like India. 

The feature examines both the initiatives taken by the owners / retailers themselves and the support that they are getting from multiple organizations like AaramShop not just to stay competitive but to thrive.

Read the full article here

Related articles

• Networking the neighbourhood kirana @ AaramShop
• Who Wins? Modern retail chains or Mom and Pop stores?

Shop Small - a wonderful initiative.

At AaramShop we had initiated the Indian Independents' Day on the 16th of August and we will grow the initiative year on year.  Our confidence in the initiative is heightened when we look at success of similar initiatives around the world - especially Shop Small in the US.

 

The initiative has boosted sales for Small Businesses across America by 23%. Has been made an official holiday by the United States Congress. Was tweeted about by President Obama. 

Almost 3 million people engaged with it on Facebook. Covered extensively by National and Local News media -- millions of dollars in free PR. In just 2 years, it has solidified its place as a national holiday and cultural phenomenon.

Read more here

Related articles

• Un-learning Sampling : Re-learning Sampling.
• The Delhi Grocery Festival - Curtain Raiser.
• Shopping aaram se!
• Order groceries for your mother-in-law too.

The changing profile of Indian retailers & AaramShop.

A typical Indian Neighborhood Grocer

Kamal Desai is the 2^nd generation grocery retailer based out of Andheri West, in Mumbai. He took over day-to-day management and operations of his family-owned grocery store about 9 years ago.

The 9 years of running his store 1^st hand and assisting his father since early childhood enables Kamal to reflect on changing trends in Indian retail and its opportunities and challenges over the last 4 decades with a level of expertise.

The changes have been happening over the years, but the last 7 to 8 years have been the most exciting and challenging. Based on what he saw around, he started off by doing minor modifications to the store layout since he took over – starting with creating self-service isles, better product displays and accessibility, in-store lighting and then going on to air-condition the store.

While the neighborhood that Kamal services has seen a steady population growth and income levels, it has also seen a change in consumers’ tastes – prompting Kamal to move away from commodities to brands. And while Kamal has a strong one on one relationship with a lot of consumers and almost a legendary service level efficiency for loyal consumers – he is facing an increasing challenge with the changing lifestyle of a number of his consumers and of course from the increasing competition from the modern trade outlets.

Real Paths of Purchase.

The importance of the shoppers' path of purchase is not lost on any brand marketer. If you can get your brand / product in the natural path of purchase of the shopper, more than half the battle is won.

The problem - while everyone understand the importance of the PtoP, establishing an exact path is a very tough exercise. It is made tougher as it would change as per variations in shopper demographic.   

This has often led folks to adopt a more "anecdotal" approach to establishing a path of purchase rather than looking at & relying on empirical data.

AaramShop has been able to accurately map the buying behavior of shoppers and their paths of purchase using the hybrid commerce platform. While what is presented here is an overall P2P of specific category-wide behavior, it is possible to establish this specific to shopper demographics, like age, gender, etc and also to brand specific behavior. 

As illustrated - if you are a brand in the "breakfast cereal category" you are more likely to be bought by buyers of "biscuits & cookies" than by the buyers of "rice, atta, lentils & dals". Make you wonder about brand placement, promos, and lot more.

This intelligence can assist brand marketers to better position / place their products in association to categories, thereby leveraging the consumers natural path of purchase.

You can view the various paths of purchase specific to category in the State of Online Grocery Shopping Report - which you can download from here. 

It is important to clarify that these depict "in-store" path of purchase and not the entire consumers shopping journey. 

Related articles

• What is getting into the Shopper's basket in India.
• Networking the neighbourhood kirana @ AaramShop
• AaramShop introduces its Premium Product Listings.
• AaramShop-A Jumbo Activation Platform !

Mobile content development strategy for tablets.

Forrester Research predicts that tablet sales this year will start to outpace notebooks. While it is clear that marketers cannot ignore the tablet as a channel, the mobile device landscape has become increasingly complex and confusing for brands and consumers alike. 

How do you incorporate the tablet as part of your mobile content development strategy? 

Doug Heise and Sascha Langfus list some of the best practices for building an optimized, engaging Web presence on the tablet here.

AaramShop has adopted the Web App approach which helps it deliver the best of both worlds, allowing highly interactive mobile apps for the tablet that is optimized from a usability and functionality perspective, but that can also be deployed to a wide range of platforms and devices. However, what really caught my attention was the need to distinguish between the mobile phone app and the tablet app. Clearly a lot of additional work to be done here.

Related articles

• How Consumers Use Tablets & Mobile Devices In The Home
• 10 Search & Social Resolutions For A Very Mobile 2012
• Is The Tablet E-Commerce Revolution Coming? [Infographic]
• 5 Content Formats to Help You Rock Mobile in 2012
• Grocery Shopping on the go.
• Red Herring Global 100 Award for AaramShop.