Mba 441d - Can You Win Back online Shoppers?

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STATISTICAL OVERVIEW:

Before starting off with the analysis of the case study,I would first like to come up wth some statistics:

• The total population of India as on 2016 is 1.324 billion.
• E-retail markets is 65% in 2018, which is nearly 100 million by 2017
• The retail sector can be broadly categorised into two classes[pic 1][pic 2]

    Organised retail                                        Unorganised retail

Organised retail is 9%, which comes up to 119,160,000 population ; (Sales $60 billion)

•                  This is broadly classified into:[pic 3][pic 4]

          E-commerce                                       Brick-and-mortar outlets

If E-retail market is 65%, then the number of users is nearly 77,454,000, which comes up to 5.54%. So, the present scenario is as such, 5.54% of the population in India purchase products from online retail outlets.[pic 5]

OBJECTIVE: To bring in business strategies that would be a response to “showrooming” for a brick-and-motor retailer just as “Benjy’s” in this case.

PROBLEM STATEMENT: The problem here for Benjy’s is that they are not able to match the sales that happen online .Researches have shown that 83% of people who want to buy electronics and appliances were now simply walking into the physical stores to have a look and feel of the product,compare prices on Amazon or other sites and order online.Due to this, the sales had drastically fallen with a quarterly loss of $700 million.Benjy’s had become the look and feel catering services for the customers.

ALTERNATIVES:

• The CEO of the company proposed this:

• Benjy’s must set a unique identity of itself to gain competitive advantage by creating a cross-brand or cross-price product mix from which customers can choose the products that they need.
• It must set itself apart by empowering their employees with product knowledge.
• Also, follow-up services are must.

• The CEO, Farb, did not want to be defensive towards the customers, instead, he wanted to build strategies that would help them build a stronger offense.
• He proposed “THE NEW BENJY’S”-he had a report prepared that said:

• They could not beat Amazon in range of products.
• They could suffer losses if they wanted to lower their prices to match up to that of Amazon.
• He wanted to move from big-box retail approach to a more boutique or specialty approach wherein he thinks TVs and laptops are not just the basic commodities that people will buy only at lower prices, they will also buy them at the highest prices if they are attended by knowledgable customer service personnels and also if they get to choose from a variated mix of brands and prices.
• He also suggested cutting down on the number and size of the stores.

• Ben’s suggestions were:

• He wanted to play both offensive and defensive.

MY SUGGESTION/BEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION: The businesses that help the customers lead their daily lives and don’t come in their ways of leading lives are the ones that will be successful in today’s era.Online browsing is the habit that most of us have developed in due course of time because that helps us seemlessly make purchases.If the customers visit retail outlets ,they have to stop doing what they are doing,in other words,deviate from the buying habit especially for younger people who are more connected digitally.The thing that will help retailers gain the market share that they have lost to the online stores is a deep market research on the habits of the customers and what helps them in their daily lives.Businesses are now not only about selling,makig revenue or servicing the products,they are much more than that.Due to the global financial crisis,the tastes and needs of the people are continuously changing.Introduction of new technologies have reduced the products’ shelf lives.