Everything is shifting towards being online. Entertainment from music to video all comes from online. Communication with friends both near and far is conducted from the confines of the internet. And now, more and more of the shopping we as consumers do for our necessities, from small fun purchases all the way to your large and frequent grocery excursions. Due to the growing usage of the internet and using it for commerce, such as the approach of Amazon, it may leave brick-and-mortar sellers wondering how they will compete with such a fresh and popular method of selling. Well, there are ways that brick-and-mortar has the upper hand. Let’s talk about those methods and ultimately giving yourself an edge against online selling powerhouses.
Sense of Togetherness
One of the biggest advantages that brick-and-mortar selling has over e-commerce is the fact that in-person interactions can prove to be a much stronger connection tactic than that of online relationship building. The first thing that you get when selling in person instead of online is the ability to connect with the other businesses within your area. Partnerships are great for businesses growing together as well as in the form of individual entities. For small businesses trying to compete with the selling power of online sources like Amazon, developing a strong selling base for their locale can aid in that business thriving as well as the other surrounding businesses in the area.
Not only are you able to connect with the other businesses in an area by operating from a brick-and-mortar location, but you are about to develop closer relationships with customers. When someone is buying online, they don’t get the interpersonal satisfaction of getting to know the company through which they are buying. Sure, satisfaction can still be present in the purchase, but having business owners or employees assisting in the process is an additional touch that will always leave customers happy. Plus, with being able to conduct business face to face, you set yourself up for being in a position for prime customer loyalty, as people gravitate towards businesses if they feel a personal tie.
One great way that brick-and-mortar stores have the upper hand can easily be overlooked. As a local business owner, being involved in the community speaks volumes to the character of your business. As a small, local business, you know best what your community enjoys and you can bring that to the area. If there are local festivals, events, or other occasions, as a local brick-and-mortar owner, you can bring that to the people of your town or region. As a brick-and-mortar owner within an area, don’t discount your capacity to incite community togetherness. As a matter of fact, know that your physical presence gives you an advantage in this ever-growing digital world.
Buying Habits
Not only does brick-and-mortar selling have the upper hand in terms of having the most effective ways to reaching customers. It also takes the cake in terms of basic buying habits that most customers display. First off, people just tend to shop more in brick-and-mortar. This is the form of buying that is most familiar and inherently natural to the majority of buyers, therefore, the majority of people still take this route for buying. According to Rutgers, ninety percent of sales are still being conducted in physical stores, showing a statistical advantage to selling from brick-and-mortar. People are still adapting to online buying and continue to feel most comfortable purchasing in person, so this is not to be overlooked!
More sales are done in brick-and-mortar stores, but it goes deeper than that. More actual dollars are spent on brick-and-mortar transactions than on online sales. As the owner of a physical store, you can rest easy knowing that your mode of selling is still the leader in earnings. Rutgers followed their previous findings with figures showing the comparison of dollars spent online and in store. American consumers currently direct the majority of their spending in brick-and-mortar stores, $10 out of every $11 as a matter of fact. This indicates that your physical store bears the advantage of encouraging more sales.
Add to this equation one more leg up to selling from a brick-and-mortar store. So, the majority of sales are done in store, first of all. Second, relative to those sales, more dollars are being spent in brick-and-mortar stores versus online. Now, consider the possibility for upselling. Ecommmerce Platforms found that people are more likely to spend more when shopping in a physical store than online. When online, people do not feel the need to purchase more than intended due to the fact that if they need any additional items, they can just get back online and buy them. However, when shopping in store, people have a mentality that they might as well buy the additional things that they may need, since they are currently in store anyways, thus leading to more instances of upselling. So all in all, selling from a physical store holds the most potential for revenue based on the buying habits of shoppers.
Growth
Operating from an online selling platform can be really great for the growth of your business. There is no doubting that. However, growth, if unmanageable or done in a way that the seller has not yet honed, could end up being detrimental to the business at hand. For that reason, operating out of a store can ensure that your growth is manageable and does not leave you feeling like your are caught in the weeds. Operating out of a store, you have a visual representation of your inventory. This makes keeping up with your numbers, knowing what you have in stock, cycling through different products, and other processes more intuitive and simplified.
Conducting business from a physical location allows you to have total visibility of and control over your different business operations. You can physically see and account for everything you are selling and the corresponding expenses necessary for warehousing and storing. For some, this could prove to be extremely difficult from an online platform, especially considering that as a small business owner, a lot of the necessary management and supervision of such processes will fall on you. For that reason, having a system in place that allows for easy manageability is key, and brick-and-mortar can allow that.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while online sellers like Amazon continue to sweep the world of commerce, it is important for brick-and-mortar operators to know where and how exactly they have the upper hand so as to compete with such selling forces. While there are advantages to brick-and-mortar, there are still benefits of online selling to consider as well. For this reason, it is not a bad idea to immerse yourself in how to achieve a good balance of physical and online selling in conjunction with one another. To learn more about selling from both modes in tandem or understand features to simplify your selling methods, contact Rave Retailer today!