Description
In today’s market, it is very essential to harmonize attention across all channels. It is also crucial to offer superior services to consumers, and give them memorable and sharable experiences. The Omnichannel approach not only gives the consumer an option to venture out to shop at the store but also gives him the convenience to shop at anytime, from anywhere. Competition between online and brick-and-mortar retailers has blurred, with e-tailers opening physical stores and their competition adopting e-commerce. The new destination for retail is Omnichannel and malls have to adopt it too, in order to stay relevant in this digital age.
Today’s shopper, crunched for time, is keen to find a seamless link between shop and home, and the penetration of the Internet and widespread usage of smartphones has helped blur the lines between physical and online retail with ‘showrooming’ – consumers visiting stores to try products before purchasing online. The world of retail is adopting technology faster than ever before in a bid to provide convenience, and technology – which consumers are welcoming with open arms.
While this acceptance of the digital age has put e-retailers in direct competition with their physical counterparts, it has provided a gap for mall developers to play a positive role and help bridge the divide between online and offline commerce.
In the cover story for India Retail Forum special issue of Shopping Centre News, we talked to a large number of mall owners and developers to understand that how they are plugging their Omnichannel strategies in order to shape a better integrated retail ecosystem.
Apart from this exciting cover story, we have also covered a myriad of pertinent aspects in this special issue. There is an industry story on how digital signages are helping malls in communicating better with their patrons, as well as a thought-provoking feature on the importance of ‘Going Green’ and how sustainability makes great business sense for mall developers.
Then there are interactions with the likes of Sunil Shroff of Viviana Mall, Mukesh Kumar of Infiniti, Shibu Philips of Lulu Mall and Derick Michael of Amanora, who all reveal the latest techniques and strategies their malls are implementing to stay ahead of the curve.
At IMAGES Group, our sincere efforts have always been to make you aware of the ground realities of today and to update you with the futuristic ideas for tomorrow, so that you always stay a step ahead in these competitive times. With this, we hope that you will find the August- September 2017 issue of Shopping Centre Newsboth insightful and educative.
