What is Shaping Retail and Consumer Electronics Industries?

The Global Consumer Electronics market started to realize many paradigm-changing innovations for the last few years like 5G, Extended Reality, Blockchain, etc. While the COVID-19 Pandemic has slowed the spread of Innovation in most of the cases, it also has boosted the demand for some of the Consumer Electronics and Smart wearables embedded with sensors that monitor various health factors.
Smart wearables & health gadgets like Pulse oximeters, wrist watches with electrocardiograms functionalities, pulse sensing earbuds were some of the main attractions at the Consumer Electronics Show 2020. The Smart wearables industry is witnessing a steady growth and the pandemic situation has just boosted it.
Staying indoors has affected the active leisure lifestyle & passive leisure activities like consuming streaming content have become more popular during these times.

Source:Nielsen

Pandemic is the Catalyst for the Online shopping:

While the overall spending has plunged, to purchase essentials and consumer electronics within the disposable income, e-commerce has become the new normal. 
Anxiety induced demand has pushed the traditional retailers to scale up the order fulfilments during the initial phases of the crisis. Today even the Internet companies and Retailers with legacy commerce systems are finding it difficult to maintain the order fulfilment ratio. Those who could bypass the supply disruptions are finding new ways to improve the customer experience. Mobile phone manufacturers are not only moving their focus towards Direct to Consumer channels also leveraging the power of social media to deliver the best in class customer experience. Social media engagement has become a mandate for the brands to deliver the best-in-class customer experience.

Ensuring Last mile delivery:

With an undoubted shift towards online shopping, eCommerce with adequate supply networks is the trusted path to ensure last-mile delivery. Most of the firms including consumer electronics manufacturers are turning towards Direct to consumers models, B2B eCommerce to manage the channel partners, and embracing Omnichannel strategies to cut through the demand uncertainties and better insights of the consumers.

Phygital Retail - the novel phenomenon:

There is a phenomenon that Physical Stores are increasingly behaving like online stores and Online Stores like the Physical Stores unleashing a novel way of Retailing termed as Phygital Retail. Phygital Retail is an ecosystem that focuses on customer experience by providing the human touch on digital interfaces and the ease of digital technologies at a physical store.

Here are some of the features of a Phygital Retail:

• Cashier-less checkout systems that provide hassle free self-checkouts
• Intelligent Displays at Stores that let the customers choose and purchase the items 
• Personalized content push through Bluetooth Low energy & WIFI: Small devices like Beacons that can be used to push personalized promotions when a passer-by moves next to the store
• The extended reality for Size/fit and other suggestions: Digital portals and apps which let users to try the required items virtually
• Intelligent chatbots that interact like humans by breaking the barriers of the traditional content and Knowledge systems
• Personalized content and ads: Phygital is all about personalization, intelligent suggestions based on purchase history and content personalization will provide the unique customer experience 

Digital ecommerce platforms that enable Unified Commerce

Digital commerce platforms enable businesses to scale up rapidly, enabling them to cope up with the competition. Web portals and apps play a vital role in providing a consistent experience to the customers.
Digital commerce platforms make it easier for businesses to retain existing customers through personalized content and Brand Survey Capabilities. 
Experiential Retail is certainly the future and Physical and Online Retail will co Digital commerce platforms enable businesses to scale up rapidly, enabling them to cope up with 
the competition. Web portals and apps play a vital role in providing a consistent experience to the customers.
The crisis has also raised a question of whether the Physical Retail is dead? The Post COVID era demands unified commerce beyond the regular omnichannel strategy. 

Unified commerce with Sonata’s Digital Platforms

Sonata leverages the power of platforms to help clients create & implement platform-based business models.
Brick & Click is a unified commerce platform that provides digital-ready operations capability and best in class digital engagement both instore and online with smart unified commerce and operations systems.