Omnichannel Commerce - Indispensable Part of All Business Strategies

Omnichannel commerce is an omnichannel approach to marketing, retailing and customer service in a way that creates integrated experiences for customers regardless of where, when, and what channels they are using. Integrating outstanding advantages, omnichannel commerce quickly becomes a prominent marketing trend trusted by many businesses to bring the best experiences to customers.

According to speakers at the Workshop on “Omnichannel Playbook - Unifying Brand and Customer Experience” recently held in Ho Chi Minh City, providing an omnichannel experience is now a paramount requirement for competition in the market and helps bring sustainable growth to retailers. Omnichannel commerce allows retailers to collect all necessary customer information and their shopping habits. On that platform, they can sketch the picture of target customers to create a more effective marketing strategy.

In addition, purchase histories help retailers learn about buying preferences and tastes of consumers (What do they often buy at stores or what products are sold best online? What is the price range of products sold offline and online?) These are all valuable data for retailers to revise their business plans in the future.

Emphasizing the need to start omnichannel commerce from building and designing dynamic branding, Mr. Nguyen Quang Trung, Founder and CEO of Nar8, said customers are now approaching brands more diversely and complicatedly than ever. From the real world to the digital world, social networks and soon the metaverse, it is easy to see that there are substantial changes in the number and nature of touch points, requiring brands to review their strategies and focus on where and when customers spend most time on brands. Today's branding is no longer "static" as before, nor is it present on a single touch point (e.g. store or shopping channel) but it becomes a journey of complete experiences.

Obviously, although it brings in a fresh look for branding, dynamic branding still does not lose core identity elements. This means that dynamic branding must meet three big criteria: changeability, flexibility and energy. What customers see in the media and on the application will be seen at other touch points (like design and complete experiences), thus helping customers feel comfortable at each touch point they interact with. “In short, dynamic branding is about shifting thinking to a broader sense of brand designing, which is to better understand the goals of the customer journey and create a complete experience journey - an experience that is both created and personalized or contextualized without losing sight of the brand story. All efforts are directed toward a unified brand experience for customers. With the drastic change of digital transformation and interaction on omnichannel commerce, dynamic branding will be a right approach that businesses, B2C and D2C brands should apply," he recommended.

Nar8 CEO also noted that shifting to omnichannel commerce requires knowledge, technology and human resources. Both large and small companies can do this. What they need are to have a new mindset, accept changes and accept new things. Once the mindset changes, it will become much easier and more effective to approach and accept technology and put it into business.

Sharing the same opinion, Mr. Nguyen Gia Anh Vu, Director of Digital & Technology at Heineken, said, omnichannel commerce has today become an indispensable part of all business strategies of corporations, stemming from three factors: Consumers' buying behaviors change too quickly; technology and digital transformation help reshape consumers' buying behaviors and environment; and shopping is no longer a matter of online or offline, but it is an O2O (online to offline) combination and all touch points throughout the consumers' buying journey.

Especially in the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed sellers to quickly seek solutions to overcome the crisis and omnichannel commerce is one of the top priorities. However, in order to successfully invest and develop omnichannel commerce, businesses must understand customer experiences and branding experience by understanding touch points along the buying journey, he said. Another requirement is they need to develop product lineups via omnichannel commerce and via customer orientation at touch points as well as throughout online and offline processes. By impacting touchpoints, it will help expand product lineups, raise the value of each shopping cart, increase purchasing frequency and strengthen customer loyalty. At the same time, it helps them sell more products at better and more competitive prices.

In addition, to successfully develop omnichannel commerce, businesses must focus on optimizing costs, which requires professional personnel who place consumers at the center of all solutions. By focusing on consumers, they will understand which new factors bring the best conveniences and values to consumers to make an appropriate investment for an effective response instead of investing in expensive extensive investment schemes. In particular, they must optimize delivery costs and logistics costs to reduce operating costs, increase product competitiveness, retain regular customers and attract new ones.

By My Chau, Vietnam Business Forum