Opportunities and challenges for OMO brick-and-mortar retail

Hi, everyone, my name is Alvin

haven't seen you for a long time! It’s been nearly a month since the first step of my successful proposal in my last article, a glimpse of the brain’s SOP for processing information. The difficulty of updating every week is really high (crying). I racked my brains, but I couldn't squeeze anything out. I think this is also a kind of hitting the wall period, right? Since there is no sunshine, learn to enjoy the coolness of wind and rain; if there are no flowers, learn to feel the fragrance of soil. All excellent text creators, let us work together and cheer up (grip).

When discussing OMO's related services with many brand customers recently, I found that everyone is very interested, because the brand side generally faces a decline in customer traffic in brick-and-mortar stores, and online e-commerce departments and brick-and-mortar store departments compete with each other. Grab resources, it is difficult to cooperate with each other and play a greater value. The concept of OMO began to be discussed in the Taiwan market in 2018. I think it is an upgrade of the original O2O practice, from O2O's "offline experience, online consumption" to OMO's "online integration offline, data-driven consumption" ; this The transformation of the entire consumption pattern is actually only 5-6 years old. If you are not clear about the difference between O2O and OMO, let me provide a consumption scenario so that you can understand these two consumption patterns more quickly. state, fundamentally different.

O2O

You are attracted by a set of sofa advertisements on the Internet, click on the advertisements to enter the brand's shopping website to browse, feel excited, and just find that the brand has a physical store, so you go to the physical store to experience the same set of sofas, you like it very much, so use A mobile phone search found that the brand’s website now has discounts, providing free home installation services, so you use your mobile phone in the store, place an order for the same set of sofas on the official website, and end the entire consumption process.

This is the most common scenario of "offline experience, online consumption" . The O2O purchase experience is indeed more secure for consumers. They can have the opportunity to see the actual appearance and feel of the product before purchasing, reducing consumption. Disputes and enhance trust in the brand. But for brands, there will be one of the most direct problems,

Should the performance of this order be attributed to the store or the e-commerce?

Don't underestimate the recognition of this performance, it is often the biggest culprit that causes the e-commerce department and the physical store department to check and balance each other and divide up resources! This is a difficult problem for O2O to solve, but in the OMO scene, it can be easily distinguished.

OMO

When you arrive at the store, store clerk A takes out a QRcode and asks you to scan it. You join the brand's LINE official account to get some discounts or discounts. At the same time, you have also completed the binding with store clerk A. Next, you and store clerk A, You can chat one-on-one on the brand's official LINE account. One day when you were too lazy to go out, store clerk A suddenly sent you a picture and text link of a product using the official LINE account, saying, "I remember you like this style, right? Our official website happens to have an event, and the discount is full. I am the first I will think of you for a while, see if you want to bring one :)" . You click on the product image and go to the website to see it, and you really like it, so you place an order on the official website, and this performance is automatically recognized on the person of the store staff A. At the same time, the store staff can see which products you have bought from the APP. This information will help the store staff to understand your preferences, which will help them continue to recommend products that are suitable for you in the future.

This is the classic scenario of "online integration with offline, data-driven consumption" , and it is also the biggest price planting of OMO. From the perspective of "people", in digital communication channels,

Establish emotional connections between people and return to the essence of transactions between buyers and sellers.

Speaking of this, I believe you can roughly understand the difference between O2O and OMO. Next, I will share a few opportunities and challenges I have observed in implementing OMO. Most of them are personal positions, not necessarily correct, and welcome We all discuss with each other.

Alvin sees opportunity

Looking at OMO from the Food Delivery Platform

There are many "Hidden Champion" restaurants near my house. These restaurants usually have two or three cats during meal time, and there may be only one customer during off-peak hours. I went to eat during off-peak hours, not surprisingly, I was the only one in the whole restaurant at the time, but during the whole dining process, a machine in their restaurant kept ringing, not a phone, but a POS machine. Orders came in, no exaggeration, I took about 20 minutes to eat, and at least 10 orders came in! This surprised me very much, and I was worried about it in vain! But this also shows a situation that consumers will rely more and more on using mobile phones to solve all the chores of daily life, which also means that consumers will have less and less opportunity or unwillingness to go out to purchase, and the number of visitors to the store will definitely decrease year by year. Therefore, how to use OMO so that consumers can achieve performance even if they do not go out will be a very important layout for brick-and-mortar retail in the future.

COVID-19 affects global retail

This accident forced the global brick-and-mortar retail industry to transform early. Although Taiwan's impact has slowed down under this wave of epidemics, it has also prompted Taiwan's retail brands to catch up on the transformation boom.

Grade 9 students gradually enter the workplace and become a part of consumption power

Absolutely prepare to meet this group of 9th graders who are the main consumers of the market and whose level of digitization has exploded. They have been exposed to mobile phones and 4G since childhood, and are very accustomed to solving all their needs online. They are willing to pay more to get more convenience and instant access. It is an imperative trend that we must grasp every 9th grader who has been to the physical store for consumption, and bind their identities to become the online operation list.

Challenges seen by Alvin

The degree of digitization, cooperation, and acceptance of new business models of store clerks in brick-and-mortar stores

For OMO to be successfully implemented, it absolutely needs to rely on the cooperation of various physical store staff, and this will be a major challenge to introduce OMO services. To be honest, people usually show rejection and fear of unknown states. The degree of cooperation will directly affect the success or failure of the entire import plan. Usually, I would recommend the brand side, don’t try to get it right at one time, you can first choose the suitable store for the import from the following directions

1. Stores with high staff cooperation

2. Stores with high performance growth potential

3. Stores with low consumer repurchase rates

All of the above situations can make good use of OMO to establish emotional connections between people, thereby enhancing purchasing opportunities, and will have the opportunity to improve the overall revenue of the store. If the revenue increases smoothly, it will definitely help to increase the willingness of other stores to import. The company does not need to be drastic or beat gongs and drums to carry out reforms. It only needs to start from a few qualified stores. On the one hand, it is better to control when there are fewer people, and on the other hand, the chance of success will be higher!

The above experiences are provided for reference by brands. OMO will be a very hot battlefield next year. How to deploy ahead of time and get ready? I look forward to communicating with you, providing each other's views and experiences, and working together to face 2021. !

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