What does the future relationship between e-commerce and retail look like?

April 08, 2021

by a searcher from Bard College in New York, NY, USA

For small businesses, is it purely an eCommerce play or is there still merit in getting product placement on retail shelves? How does the consumer experience change? Should it be an omnichannel approach?

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Reply by a searcher
from Pepperdine University in Boise, ID, USA

Every e-com channel is different and has it's own unique pluses/minuses. I have a handful of e-com stores on the Walmart platform and they give sellers the opportunity to to take top=selling products on their e-com site and have Walmart as a direct buyer (DSV) - where Walmart issues you a purchase order and you ship product to their retail brick and mortar stores. Amazon takes a different approach and uses data to step into a product category, where they see an opportunity to be a competitor with a seller on their platform. Direct B2c or B2B via website, where you can build a brand, retain the data and control the customer experience is ideal, but then you have to get the eyeballs (drive paid traffic).

Reply by a searcher
from Babson College in Natick, MA, USA

Retail isn't going away for at least the next 5 years even with the COVID shock. Of course, like all things "it depends" but the simple reason retailers will stick around is last mile delivery. For some products, it doesn't make economic sense to ship direct to consumer and in retail, the customer "pays" for last mile by bringing himself to the store. This is dependent on any particular product's supply chain dynamics though - low price to weight ratio? Where is your demand? Is the product perishable? Depending on your definition of "small" getting into retail stores can turbocharge growth.

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