This assignment focus on Big W, an Australian retail store which is located in New South Wales. The Big W was created over a decade ago, since then up to now, the retail store has generated a considerable amount of profit. The Big w organization provides its customers with a wide ranging general merchandise in a dedicated one stop-shop. Besides having a retail store in New South Wales, Australia, the Big W Corporation has an online platform where it serves its customers. While physical retail may be considered as an obsolete aspect in business as the innovations has come with more advanced forms of marketing, Big W still consider physical retail useful.
The Big W retailing operation currently involves both online as well as the physical platform. With an aim of emerging at the front edge among its competitors like Amazon and to satisfy the needs of the ever-growing number of its customers, Big W Company has embarked on the online platform along with its original physical retail and has significantly expanded its product range. In doing so, the organization has expanded its warehouse and as a result, it has been able to offer a range of goods and services. Furthermore, the company’s distribution channel has gotten diversified by operating a physical store alongside the online platform. It seems that Big W has recognized that blending retailing with the online platform is handy than online platform alone.
Besides, a considerable number of consumers like ordering products online and pick them from the retail store physically by themselves. Having observed this customer behavior, Big W ended up implementing both e-commerce alongside its original physical retail marketing. Besides, some consumers who pay for products online test them from the retail store by themselves before they pay for the products. Nevertheless, the organization has given more emphasis on e-commerce than retail and as a result, it has reported a positive growth over the years. Big W’s straggling department growth sales increased by 0.7 percent to over 3 billion dollars in the 2018 fiscal year. Along this rationale, we can predict the future of the retail industry in five years to come. The appreciation of retail store by Big W, which is the leading backer of the online store is a clear indication that e-commerce is not the final destination of marketing (Ciptawilangga, 2010, pp.345-346). Just like online platform may be important for a particular business, physical retail is also a fundamental aspect in the business.
With the help of Big W retail stores case scenario, this paper seeks to present a report basing on the “The Next 5 Years: Series 2-Episode 5” and “The future of Retail in Australia” article. The controversial claims by Marc Anderson in “The future of Retail in Australia” that retail store is dead may be attempting to find out the relevance of physical stores in the digital world. Evidently, people nowadays want to purchase goods and services in the easiest way possible while saving time from anywhere possible. Along with this rationale, e-commerce has been implemented by various business industry in order to meet the ever-growing needs of consumers (Week, 2012, p.2013). It can also be seen that “clicks” are replacing the “bricks” due to the diversified distribution channels as well as the significant benefits that are associated with online retail leaving the analysts in physical retail with a question whether retail still has an opportunity in marketing. The roles of physical stores may not be realized, having consumed with the fast pacing technology of smartphones and the internet that has changed the way people shop. Be that as it may, this article takes exception to Marc Anderson’s argument and contend that as much as an online platform may be considered handy in business, the physical store also does.
To support my stand in this position; first of all, this paper asserts that there are numerous security issues related with the web-based retailing (Niranjanamurthy, Kavyashree, Jagannath, and Chahar, 2013, pp.9). For instance, customers, particularly the traditionalist ones are worried about the security of the credit or debit cards and the data they give online when doing online transaction during the purchase of goods or services. To shield their data, they want to physically walk to the store and purchase items directly from the store as it can be observed from the video that a significant number of retailers walked into the Rebel Sports store searching for various products (Evans, Sehgal, Bugnaru, and McGowan, 2009, pp.23-37). So the question is, in what manner will the online retail provide products for these clients? Remembering the objective of the business it serves a more extensive market as could reasonably be expected, the online retailers will be left with no other than to grasp the presence of the physical stores. These security issues are associated with different issues, for example, valuing the way of life of going out for shopping throughout the end of the week, the nature of the objective, the innovations available in the area of the target market among others (Flanagan, 2014).
Survey tells that innovation has incredibly changed the retail business (Mohr, Sengupta, and Slater, 2010, pp.21). Be that as it may, this does render retails useless as insinuated by Marc Anderson due to the fact that the Rebel Sports retail has been one of the prosperous stores and it is primarily based on physical retails as the video depicts. Brynjolfsson, Hu, and Rahman (2013, pp.24-31) report that the future, as well as the achievement of business success, is tied on both on online retail as well as physical retail. This contention is bolstered by (Colla, and Lapoule, 2012, pp.842-864) who suggest that, the retailers who do not value both the physical as well as the online perspectives in the retail business might be left out in the stiff competition concerning business in the near future due to the reason that clients seem to acknowledge both on the web-based and physical retailing.
Examination of literature suggests that the achievement of the retail depends on the physical stores (Chattaraman, Kwon, and Gilbert, 2012, pp.2055-2066). The big stores which are profitable like Alibaba among others can be credited to the physical stores. This store began first by setting up physical stores before establishing an online store. After entering the e-commerce business, their online deals have become much quicker compared to other stores which started before it was formulated. Furthermore, Amazon, one of the giants in the e-commerce business have recognized the benefits of physical retail as they opened some retails in Australia as noted by Grimmer (2017).
Business flourishes by displaying the products and services which they offer. The online marketing might be not able to demonstrate the items being sold by the organization. This will consequently force the clients to go to the physical retail in order to get themselves experienced with the brands being sold by the organization. In the event that the organization has only online platform who will the necessities of these clients cater for? This is the question that Marc Anderson seemed to overlook. According to Laudon and Traver (2013, pp.29-33), the facts confirm that online platform spares customers a considerable measure of costs, for example, the reduced cost of products and time for walking to and from the retail, however with absence of the physical retails, this might be a major hit to the retailers (Mulpuru, Harteveldt, and Roberge, 2011, pp.1-8). For instance, the online retailers might be compelled to acquire additional expenses by paying the manufacturer of the products to exhibit them for their sake.
On the off chance that this procedure is utilized, at that point, the retailer may lose the association with the retailer. Additionally, not all clients might have the capacity to achieve the products and services particularly for the worldwide retailers like the Big W business organization. Moreover, Erica Berchtold who is the managing director of a Rebel Sports retail store says in their discussion with Bernard Salt regarding the future of the retail that the organization is a very large and successful retailer, which is committed to its customers. Furthermore, it is extremely troublesome for this system to apply to little and medium business retailers. Accordingly, this particular report holds that physical retail locations are as yet significant even with the current innovation.
It is unquestionable that technology has greatly impacted the retail industry. This, however, does not mean that the physical store has been replaced by online retail. As said by Erica, the Rebel Sports retail director, a super retail group encourage innovation, nature development and offer flexibility in the workplace. It can be deduced from the discussion that for a business to prosper in the Rebel Sport’s manner, online retail and the physical store must operate like a hand and a glove.
This notion is further backed by the “The future of the retail store – what does online mean for bricks and mortar?” article which further expound with the help of a scenario of a Sport Check who created a concept store in Toronto [VIDEO], that sandwiching the dual (retail and e-retail) is mandatory if a business is to have a bright future which all business organizations yearn for (Fuchs, Ritz, Halbach, and Hartl, 2011, pp. 1-6).
To add to that, technology can enhance in-store by developing retails which are digitally connected (Aubrey, and Judge, 2012, pp.31-39). Due to the fact that the advanced technology can now enable the customers to use their mobile devices in-store, retailers can leverage this golden opportunity and come up with an exciting experience making consumers to want to engage directly with their brand of choice both physically and digitally, which cannot be achieved by retail or e-retail if they are executed independently.
Conclusion
A conclusion can be derived based on the above analysis. This article expounds that e-retail cannot prosper without implementation of the physical store. From the observation of the Big W store progress since it was created, it is clearly illustrated that the success of a particular business is based on both offline as well as online strategies, therefore, physical retail is still a fundamental aspect in business.
Based on the analysis and discussion above, the following can be recommended:
Reference list
Aubrey, C., and Judge, D., 2012, Re-imagine retail: Why store innovation is key to a brand’s growth in the ‘new normal’, digitally-connected and transparent world. Journal of brand strategy, 1(1), pp.31-39.
Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y.J., and Rahman, M.S., 2013, Competing in the age of omnichannel retailing, pp.24-31, MIT.
Chattaraman, V., Kwon, W.S., and Gilbert, J.E., 2012, Virtual agents in retail web sites: Benefits of simulated social interaction for older users. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(6), pp.2055-2066.
Ciptawilangga, Y., 2010, Online merchandising and ecommerce with virtual reality simulation of an actual retail location, U.S. Patent Application, pp.345-346.
Colla, E., and Lapoule, P., 2012, E-commerce: exploring the critical success factors. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 40(11), pp.842-864.
Evans, P.F., Sehgal, V., Bugnaru, C., and McGowan, B., 2009, US Online Retail Forecast. 2008 To 2013, pp.23-37, Forrester Inc, March.
Flanagan, J., 2014, Virtual Reality and Retail: Fashion’s Ecommerce Trends, Available at: < https://www.huffingtonpost.com/fueled/virtual-reality-and-retai_b_5594653.html> [Accessed on 22nd September 2018]
Grimmer, L., 2017, Online retail giant opens for trading: Experts play down impact of Amazon: interview with Helen Kempton, pp.45-52.
Laudon, K.C., and Traver, C.G., 2013, E-commerce. Pearson, pp.29-33.
Mohr, J.J., Sengupta, S., and Slater, S.F., 2010, Marketing of high-technology products and innovations. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Mulpuru, S., Harteveldt, H.H. and Roberge, D., 2011, Five retail ecommerce trends to watch in 2011. Reproduction, pp.1-8.
Niranjanamurthy, M., Kavyashree, N., Jagannath, S., and Chahar, D., 2013, Analysis of e-commerce and m-commerce: advantages, limitations and security issues. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(6), pp.9.
Week, R., 2012, Ecommerce in fashion: How retailers are driving online sales, Retrieved November, 20, p.2013.
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