Being Omnipresent

That seamless experience which allows you to buy your favourite product, either from a brick and mortar store or an online store, from your store on a Road to a Mall to a High Street, from a mobile app to a website... You must be Omni-present​. Omni is a Latin word which means everywhere. Omni Channel means ensuring your presence is Everywhere​.

- Dr. Rupal Shah Agarwal

When online retailers like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal etc. started selling products online, the offline brick and mortar retailers considered it a threat to their business. In my viewpoint, Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal were creating market places wherein even a single brick and mortar store owner could register and sell his products to the world. Never in his life can he has imagined his store catering to millions of users across the world. Now, do you call this an opportunity or a threat! The call is yours.

Consumers expect brick-and-mortar stores to keep up, offering the same kind of integration in the shopping experience. They expect to be able to order items online, have them shipped to their house and return them in the store – a seamless experience between online and brick-and-mortar. Retailers must make sure that they meet these expectations, because if they don’t, shoppers can easily find another store that does. This seamless shopping experience is called omnichannel retailing.

Online Market Places and Offline Brick and Mortar Stores are like two sides of the same coin. Their modus operandi is diverse but the aim is the same, “Making more Sales”. Any brand looking at national/ international expansion must consider each and every channel that reaches out to the customer and ensure their significant presence on every channel in every way.