Showing posts with label hybrid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hybrid. Show all posts

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Buy Now Pay Later - demonitization special


Demonetization led to neighbourhood retailers, especially grocery stores, been adversely effected as business volumes dipped due to lack of availability of loose cash and the mindset amongst consumers to hold on to their low denomination currently.

However, rather than getting pulled down by that, we worked with our partner retailers to ensure they leverage their years of relationships & trust within their community. 

We have enabled a great feature on our mobile apps for our partner retailers keeping in mind the scarcity of monies on account of demonitization. 


Our retailers can now extend informal credit to their known consumers, using our merchant app (AaramOn). The retailer himself decides the amount of credit extended and it’s duration. AaramShop communicates the info of the credit amount etc seamlessly to the customers. 

This informal credit line means that the consumers can shop for the daily needs without needing to worry about cash in hand. The shopping can be done not just on the app and the website, but also in-store. The customers can pay at the end of the credit term, using cards, JioMoney, cheque or even cash.

AaramShop has extended this service to all retailers at zero cost to them and their customers. This is to ensure that the pain demonitization is eased by the years of relationship and trust between the retailers and their customers. 

Mobile Coupons Drive Traffic to the small retailers.

The independent retailers have had a drawback. Their marketing efforts lacked teeth. Unlike the large format stores, the neighborhood based independent stores have been unable to undertake precise and results oriented marketing. 

Mobile Coupons are known to drive consumer engagement and usage, but their usage has traditionally been limited larger establishments with well defined CRM practices. 



AaramShop has finally brought forth a solution that combines the power of mobile coupons with the ease of use and flexibility. A solution which is custom designed for small retailers and their specific requirements.

Our coupon solution helps the retailers drive:
1. increased awareness among the shoppers in the neighborhood.
2. sales of specific product lines or bill cuts of higher value.
3. increased footfalls and orders. 

And all with the flexibility of using our free merchant solutions on the app, cloud or in-store - AaramOn

Blurring the offline online divide.


The more I interact with our partner retailers (and potential partners), the more convinced I am, that the advantages enjoyed by the offline neighborhood retailers - that of close proximity to the consumers, perfect mix of assortment & pricing, low cost delivery model and ownership of real estate; when integrated with the opportunities offered by the digital mediums, makes for a perfect commerce model. 

More so in the grocery and personal care domain. 

Neighborhood based commerce needs to be hybrid in nature, and enabled on all possible touch-points for the consumers. 

Hybrid Retail is what we at AaramShop have enabled for thousands of independent retailers - wherein we help them not just with relevant in-store technology, but seamlessly help take their inventories online via smart web-stores and mobile apps and supported by unique assisted shopping for customers. 

To learn more, please visit www.aaramon.com or write to me. 

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Hybrid Commerce at work - effective commerce.

In a first of its kind of initiative, AaramShop Pakistan undertakes hybrid commerce to enable consumers across the city of Karachi to order their preferred grocery products and have their orders delivered at the doorsteps within hours.

A store specific promotional FSI.

So why is this special?
  1. Its the ideal local commerce solution - leverages the strengths of retailers in the neighborhoods and power of the brands. A solution that extends the opportunities offered by the web to stand-alone stores. 
  2. It rides on the existing infrastructure rather than re-inventing the wheel - with deliveries at the doorstep within hours (not days).
  3. It uses multichannel marketing strategies - web, mobile apps, calls, FB store and physical stores - all rolled in; and that too in an evolving environment like Karachi.
  4. AaramOffers, specific to the store help ensure the consumers in the locality get to take advantage of local deals.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Online and Offline shopping experiences are blurring.


A new research from Google & Ipsos found that 80% of shoppers will research online for holidays shopping before making a purchase this season, and they switch devices to suit their needs. 

“For example, 51% of shoppers will research online and then visit the store to purchase, while 17% will visit a store first and then purchase online. Another 32% will research online, visit store to view a product, then return online to purchase. In short, the shopper’s journey looks less like a funnel and more like a flight map, and the lines between online and offline shopping experiences are blurring.” says Google Retail Industry Director, Todd Pollak.

This integration of the online and offline experiences offers great opportunities but also brings with it risks for all brands / retailers who are focussed on any one of the two formats. It is important to have a "hybrid" commerce strategy.


Thursday, September 22, 2011

Unlearn e-commerce to win.

Jon Stine at the CISCO Retail Blog, in his recent post - seems to have hit the nail on the head. He writes:
"When e-commerce entered retail life in the mid-1990s, it was understandably regarded as just another channel of distribution – indeed, as just one more store. With this perspective, the key performance metric was (and generally remains to this day) site revenue. Conversion, another key metric, was defined as site transactions as a percent of site visits.


This still makes sense – but at a narrow, misleading level, because e-commerce no longer defines the connected world for retail.


In this age of Google and Facebook, the primary value today of the Internet to the shopper – and to your brand – is less about transactions, and more about search. On the PC, on the tablet, on the mobile devices, amidst the aisles.


The Internet – and the search function of the ever-mobile Internet – is now the front door of the entire brand."

What Jon points to is what we AaramShop are experimenting with - the hybrid retail model of integrating the "zero moment of truth" of the shopper with respect to any brand (ZMOT / online research, social media engagement), with the "first moment of truth" when the product is actually bought. (FMOT)

The brands should appreciate the fact that the FMOT for the brand need not happen in the traditional e-commerce manner for them to have a overall e-commerce strategy for their CPG / FMCG brand. The huge volume to pre-purchase online research is being overlooked due to the limitations of the old e-commerce thinking.