Omnichannel retailing becoming popular among furniture brands

It can be quite a challenging task when you navigate to the local stores, choose the carpenters and materials to suit your needs. It takes a lot of time and proper and thorough research is a must. Thankfully, the invention of mobile technology and social media brings one of the biggest changes in the furniture retailing industry, where online stores do all the hard work. However, pandemic seems to have given rise to omnichannel retailing for a better customer experience. Could you please explain what is this Omnichannel retail all about?

Omnichannel retail is an e-commerce strategy that focuses on delivering shoppers an impeccable buying experience across digital and physical channels. Most of the people are confused between multichannel and omnichannel commerce. Both are the same, with a slight yet most significant difference between the two. Multichannel commerce sells furniture products across multiple platforms, whereas omnichannel retailing connects all the services and channels to improve the customer experience. Wait, this is not a new strategy but a powerful and consistent marketing formula, especially for the furniture marketplace. In short, omnichannel retail fuses the online presence of the brand with the traditional in-store channel.

But was there a genuine need for omnichannel retailing in furniture industry?

When the Covid pandemic broke out, the shopping journey and experience of consumers took major turns and twists. There are actually more reasons than one why omnichannel retailing in furniture industry has come into being and has eventually become popular among many furniture brands.

Here are some of the major reasons:

Lack of Credibility: Strong brand credibility in businesses is very important for building the trust of customers and future relationships as well. Well, in India, people believe more in referential marketing and prefer to shop from local stores. Thus, credibility is always a concern as people have a fear of being duped. Unfortunately, the alarming rates of security breaches shake the overall trust of shopping furniture online at best.

Intangibility: Furniture is like a huge investment. And until and unless we feel the product, the perception of risk while buying the online furniture increases. This is more difficult for the old-school people who love to try before purchasing. In this case, we can just read the product descriptions and virtually see the image.

Loss of Faith: Online shopping is like buying products in a virtual world. Thus, this eliminates face-to-face communication, which results in the loss of power of persuasion. The customers don't get the chance to talk to the salesman while buying the products and vice versa, unlike the physical stores.

How is Omnichannel retail bringing up the new wave in the furniture industry?

Here are some of the outcomes that seem like the new wave for the furniture industry after adoption and embracing of the omnichannel strategy.

Seamless shopping experience for the customers: As the majority of the customers use smartphones and laptops, this makes furniture shopping easy at their fingertips. While integrating with the social media channels on a website or app, you connect the customers with your brand on different channels and draw the attention of new product arrivals, coupons, exciting discounts etc. Once they're on your website, you also showcase the physical stores and provide the subscription to the newsletters so that they are updated with the new collection in your Inbox. In this way, the furniture brand will always be in the sight of the customers. Hence, it makes a smooth and convenient shopping experience for the customers, whether their choice is to buy from a website, app, or moving to a store.

Marketing by data-driven targeted customers: The omnichannel retailing strategy enables data-driven marketing. Let me explain how. The brand can easily track the in-store customer purchases of products as well as from digital media. Based on these insights, brands can get the data of products that are more on-demand and becoming the center of attraction in the market. Even Geo marketing can be done, which eases the marketing efficiency in the furniture industry.

Consistency in online and offline mode of shopping: Whether the customers want to buy online or offline, omnichannel retailing provides a convenient and flexible experience in terms of prices, products and services. Also, those who have added the product to the cart can visit the nearest store to experience the furniture in their own way. In contrast, customers can scan the QR code at the offline store to know about the products with minimum assistance.

Do you think that this new trend or strategy is here to stay or is it a temporary phenomenon?

Mind you that the consumer behaviour in India is very complex and keeps on changing. Thus, the omnichannel strategy helps to understand the 360 degrees perspective of consumer purchases, which results in delivering worthy products at better prices and strengthening the relationship with the customers. Therefore, there is no reason why it shouldn't stay or continue.