Omnichannel retail refers to a seamless integration of channels that includes all touchpoints across online and offline, gadgets, digital and phygital products, services, and experiences, and now the definition gets extended to the frameworks of the Metaverse. While the e-commerce adoption hasn’t eliminated the physical stores completely, the Metaverse also is likely to have a similar impact. Instead, it will offer retail brands a landscape to experiment and get creative with new store formats, business models, experiences, and interoperability between mediums, devices, and places. 

We got candid with Bhaskar Ramesh, Director – Omnichannel, Google India at IReC 2022 to know more about where Google is taking consumers and the business world in the search for AR and VR.

The Shift in Consumer Behavior and Retail Brands 

E-commerce was big and then came the pandemic crashing down the physical stores and making e-commerce bigger than it was. However, the fear of touch parting ways has pushed brands to advance their abilities to transform physical and digital retail and not give up on brick-and-mortar setups entirely. While breaking down the twists and turns Bhaskar Ramesh said, “The changes that we see from the vantage point from here is that the retail transformation that we’ve witnessed over the last two years is here to stay. There are three fundamental changes to this transformation: 

-    Omnichannel which used to be a competitive advantage is now a consumer expectation. Our very recent year-end consumer survey shows that 67 percent of consumers that we surveyed tried something new in 2021 leading to a boom in D2C brands (5.33 percent growth). The report shows consumers are expecting all products are available digitally as well as physically.

-    Data platforms are the fuel - be it any sector, Q-Commerce or Live Commerce, people are trying to see vectors apart from profitability like two-way communication and strong data platforms as important elements. Here the consumers become your marketers.

-    The rise and rise of video commerce. I had the privilege of working on a Youtube campaign a while back and I observed that video was driving apps, performance, and engagement. Now the video is driving commerce. While earlier, creators could make money via ads on Youtube videos, now the creators have 12 new/different ways of monetizing. 70 percent of the time people say that Youtube has helped them buy something. The video which started to play a significant role in the upper funnel will start to do the same in the lower funnel in the coming years. The younger the audience, the greater will be the capitalization of this opportunity.”

How Far Have Indian Retail Brands Penetrated in Becoming Omnichannel?

While highlighting how Google looks at digital-first businesses of the future, he shares “At Google, we’ve organized ourselves in recognizing digital-first businesses and omnichannel businesses differently. In a Forrester study that we’ve done on businesses across sectors, we realized that the fundamental opportunity right now in India lies in bridging the gap in what is present in the physical world to that in the digital ecosystem because that’s what the consumer is expecting. 

93 percent of consumers have said their pre-purchase journeys have become omni while only 40 percent of businesses are offering any kind of hybrid experiences and now a factor of concern is that only 20 percent of these companies are said to be equipped with advanced tools and tech to be able to unlock the full potential of opportunities available to them. 

So what used to be a competitive advantage for retailers at large is today the most basic consumer expectation. Hence, 80 percent of retailers are falling short of delivering the promise which for me is an opportunity. 60 percent of the time consumers see that the information that they see digitally, as well as offline, has friction or doesn’t align. So the challenge in discoverability which was already there for retailers to deal with has now multiplied.”

“We are seeing companies make incredible investments so that they can build their omnichannel presence. Auto companies are reimagining their dealership of tomorrow, financial companies like Bajaj Finance who have 150-200 branch networks are thinking about how can talk to their 50 million plus consumers using a 3-in-1 app, and retailers are talking about how can they add more functionality to their stores and D2C brands are emerging at a platform and at a brand level,” he further added.

You can be a brand in any sector, the worlds are converging and retail’s future lies in having an omnichannel presence. 

By When will India’s Retail Brands Deliver Omnichannel Experiences?

Retail brands are adopting omnichannel at a rapid pace, however, most of the brands have not reached a stage where they can deliver a true omnichannel experience.

“Consumers are way ahead and retailers are way behind so investing in tech infrastructure would be the first step to going omni. This includes your cloud infrastructure, and customer data platforms and defining these cohorts, identifying the omnichannel metrics that matter. I’ve seen a lot of senior management in retail who are now convinced and are decisive now, so by 2024-25 we should be able to see a set of top retailers emerge as a leading cohort in omni,” he states. 

What’s Google’s Role in Enabling Brands to Become Omni?

The user journey has changed many folds. Google with its set of product suites like Google My Business, Youtube, cloud platforms, shopping platforms, etc. is enabling retailers to make that transition towards manifesting a digital transformation. As digital and physical worlds converge, it is fundamentally helping retailers with three things: 

- Make retail outlets, dealers, agents, and branches discoverable online irrespective of the industry.

- Getting inventory onboard for the purpose of discoverability and following it up with online to offline and vice versa to drive attribution.

- With the help of this pyramid it is building D2C and hyperlocal capabilities for large companies for them to directly be around their consumer 

A combination of all of these will build the first level of hygienic base for retailers to start online and then we equip them with analytics, data, and cloud which is critical and foundational. 

Live Commerce with Youtube

India is a video-first country and so Youtube fundamentally defines the internet right for the masses in India. On Youtube, we see an emergence of live commerce in interesting ways. There’s a lot of user intent before us to exploit it and turn that into a seamless user experience. People are not just coming on Youtube to understand what to buy but they are also coming to understand where to buy. 

“Our focus is to enable that creator who is helping you to decide which product to buy. We are on our way to bringing to India the early stage experiments that we are already doing in other markets,” he says. 

“Google isn’t in silos with Q-commerce. It wants to play a meaningful role in connecting businesses and users no matter where the transaction culminates. That’s the vision they have for the Indian retail sector,” he further adds. 

How does Google look at Metaverse?

“There’s a global view on Metaverse and then there’s Google’s view on Metaverse. If one looks at it globally, Metaverse is a very interesting space for retail innovation. The way I look at it is there’s a novelty aspect to Metaverse today. To contextualize Metaverse today, one can see it has a five-day test match and the toss is happening - that’s how early stages it is at. So there’s a lot of experimentation that we’ll see in the coming years. Right now everyone’s looking at the front door to the Metaverse. I think there’s a need to reduce the friction and make higher bottom lines. Until that happens we need to watch the space evolve,” he asserts.

Globally, we are already seeing the giants like Ralph Lauren, Nike, Paxon, and Gucci experiment with the Metaverse already by selling their goods online and Nike buying a virtual sneakers company. The technology holds a lot of promise and even in India, we are seeing the early stage experimentations happening with Mahindra selling Thar NFTs for Rs 26 lakh and which was then donated to Nanhi Kali Foundation. 

“For us at Google, we don’t call it meta but we see AR and VR as the foundational technologies that form a base for developing these products and experiences further. We’ve been investing in these technologies for a very long time. I think great technologies should be invisible. So when people are able to use AR technology in the real world in a seamless way that to us would be an immersive technology. Our goal is to make people more immersive in the real world as it is through these technologies than taking them away from it,” he adds.

How is Google Taking AR and VR to the Next Level?

Here are a few ways in which Google is taking AR and VR to the next level:-

“Multi-search (Soon to launch) - We’ll use Google Lens as the new interface to discover a variety of products. A buyer can look for a yellow dress that’s physically available and can look where to buy it online. She can add a functionality to the search word if she wants to buy the same dress in green. This makes shopping more seamless in a visual first way. 

Mapping the Real World - With Google Maps, we are making an attempt to build a more helpful relationship between the real and virtual worlds. Yet to arrive in India, but in other parts of the world, we have enabled over 1.2 billion buildings to have a very immersive street view which will open up many new experiences making it utilitarian of sorts. In our recent work with Singapore Tourism Board, we have enabled a feature to be able to look at all aspects of a destination before arriving at it. These types of technologies can disrupt all our industries but the utilities, agility and seamless integration are what will determine how close they can get us to the real world. 

Google Translate Glasses (Concept) – It is another initiative that we are working on. It can translate the subtitles into a variety of mother tongues making videos more interactive and closer to the real world.

Broadly, video commerce is likely to grow faster and we are focusing on helping creators make money in multiple ways. So how the creator economy meets the video commerce capabilities is what will power the next wave of video commerce be it social, live, or Q-commerce,” he explains.

Where do Tech and Retail meet in the Future?

Retail is in its most exciting phase of innovation in India. On one side, you have the buyers who are your customers as well as creators and on the other side, you have the products which are physical as well as digital. Then there are technologies that are constantly defining how brands and consumer behaviors evolve. How brands embrace them along with data for the masses is what is a priority of retail brands today - be it from any sector or category. 

“Retail brands must focus on being consumer-centric in everything that they do instead of being channel-centric. Retailers must know that they are building for a privacy-first future that all of us are embracing. It’s very important to invest in your first-party data strategy and know your customer. That data about the knowledge of customers enables brands to have a two-way engagement. What brands know about your customers will define the channel strategy as opposed to taking a channel first approach,” he concludes.