Given a chance I would love to buy even regular grocery items from the e-stores. I mean why not? It saves a lot of effort of going to the stores then comparing all related items, carrying them with you from store to home and plus we get attractive discounts also. The only risk is of getting damaged or spoilt item, but nowadays that also has been reduced by the wonderful extraordinary services from the sites like flipkart. Nobody can deny that they haven’t use any of the online services and the growth is visible from the statistics in the past year online shopping has seen an increase of around more than 30% leave out the stats the bombardment of ads by myntra, flipkart, jabong, snapdeal e.t.c itself make it clear that how fast this million dollar industry is growing.

But wait a minute what about our pandey bhaiyaa who sits in a shop of 160 square feet area with all possible collection of books with him. This is the condition with every such kind of shop in a metro. Even the big stores are also affected. It is true that there is still a market for them but that is only due to some tight spot in our infrastructure. Yes we are far away from our Korean counter parts who shop in the virtual stores setup in the subway just scanning the code from the mobile and ordering them. I observed some people at a book store (CROSSWORD) in Kolkata, the guys sat on the comfy chair in the store went through the index and some pages of a very famous novel and while leaving out they just kept it on the shelf, this was not a rare scene for me but the point is that people were using the store for just to checking out the book. In such a scenario what will be the fate of the physical store. On asking shop owner about the situation he agreed that the sales have dropped but still the store has some loyal customer.

But the question here is not of loyal customer. if I am paying for something I would like to have  a very good value for that there is nothing wrong or unethical about it. The problem here is if such kind of trend continues for books then mobiles then other FMCDs and may be FMCGs then what will be the fate of the physical stores. Now what marketing strategy they should apply to create the customer’s preference to the conviction. Because down the line every market professional knows that out of 4 Ps of marketing the P for Price is a very important factor and its importance increases when one of the P (i.e. Product) almost vanishes as the product is same in each case. A physical store cannot reduce the price as compared to an e-store because of the extra cost occured by the company for renting the space, maintaining the space, providing the comfort to the customers. So, what it can be where they can create a better point of differentiation over the e-stores.

So, should the physical store charge fees to someone who enters the shop? On asking about the comments on this step from a shop owner the answer came was that charging fee would minimize the customer visit and in that case the customer who were the regular buyer will also feel cheated so they welcome everyone in the store even if they are not buying it. The physical stores have started giving membership cards to the regular customers to retain them and in some cases to attract new customers but the fact is really frustrating for them that the e-stores are rapidly eating up their market segment.

On asking a customer about his new mobile purchase from infibeam, the reply was that he can easily compare 10-20 mobiles on the net while in order to do so in the store the store staffs starts giving him stares plus he has a lot of option to choose from which is not possible to keep in a mobile store. Also, the prices are more or less same. Now, the first problem can be solved by training the staffs but what about the inventory problem, it is really hard for a store to keep all the varieties they just keep the most selling ones and some other varieties only.

Still the problem is not so much visible as the online companies who are playing in the Indian market are not much big but what about the time when Amazon.com will come into the picture. The giant is known worldwide for wiping out the physical stores because of the low prices and unmatchable supply chain application.

The things which these store can edge is the service quality which includes keeping staff who can educate the customers about their product and can ensure every kind of after sales service required by the customer and yes that is pretty much what in my opinion physical store can do because apart from that any other extra service can easily be imitated by their electronic brother. 

So my question is up to you - what advice you will give to our pandey bhaiyya?