Understand About Quick Commerce: A Guide
It is 2022, and the modern consumer journey comes in with a demand for speed. From online shopping deliveries to takeaway food, the sooner a customer has the potential to purchase in their hands, the better it is.
Now with the arrival of e-commerce in our lives, it is something that you must not come as too much as a surprise. If you can order a takeaway in an hour, it is sure that consumers must be able to order other things pretty fast.
Now let’s look a bit closer at quick commerce, its advantages, and how the brands can implement it.
The ever-changing landscape of eCommerce
After the Covid-19 pandemic, eCommerce has accentuated these needs, particularly commerce delivery. Today. Social distancing is a prevalence of working from home directly implies that consumers are less likely to visit the stores. So, they seek commerce delivery which is the most sought-after option.
Meaning of quick commerce
Quick commerce is the next top destination in terms of the evolution of eCommerce. It is, as the name suggests, all about speed. Quick commerce means consumers can expect delivery within one hour of placing the order.
It may seem like a concise timeline, but quick commerce is usually reserved for small orders instead of the weekly grocery shop. Consumers might also purchase the product they unexpectedly ran out of or the ingredient they require to make the dinner.
If the retailers want their orders out as soon as possible, it is given that they will need to rely on online ordering systems, local warehouses, and a delivery team on two wheels.
However, quick commerce is not something new for us when we think about it. It has been used in the takeaway food industry for many years. With eCommerce brands consistently trying to cut back the delivery times, it was just a matter of time before consumers could get other products delivered to their doorstep without any delays.
Advantages of quick commerce
While quick commerce comes in with the benefits of ultra-fast service to customers, there are plenty of advantages for the brands who take advantage of it. Below are the top three advantages of quick commerce for brands:
- Providing an ultimate customer experience
As consumer expectations grow, quick commerce may help the online retailers meet them and even exceed them. It also helps to foster brand loyalty. The customer pain points that brisk trade can solve quickly are often meaningful. It can help save a party host who has forgotten to purchase a present on his niece’s birthday. It may simply help someone who cannot make it to the shop to stock up on the essentials.
- Potential for more significant margins
Quick commerce can easily hold a lot of potential profit for the people who take advantage. One study data suggests that around half the ratio of shoppers conveniently spent the extra money to get what they needed during the pandemic. They also paid an additional amount for the on-demand fulfillment and bought online pickup in-store options.
- Competitive USP
Quick commerce helps to provide different businesses with a new value proposition. It can set the competitors apart. Customers who require immediate delivery may be willing to try new products and easily order from the new stores.
The added convenience of quick commerce offers online retailers an added way to help them compete with significant multinational marketplaces like Amazon and brick-and-mortar stores.
Steps to implement quick commerce
Quick commerce is essential for brands that target professionals and older people. It also makes a lot more sense for CPG brands with a broader audience. However, eventually, all consumers may come to expect the availability of super-fast delivery, so it is good to start implementing a system that has q-commerce now.
Here are three crucial steps for a quick commerce to-do list:
- Setting up local hubs
If you want to pick, pack, and deliver the products in an hour or lesser than that, your location must be pretty close to your customers. For this reason, quick commerce relies on local warehouses that can help to serve people in the nearby proximity.
Many quick commerce delivery services in the cities usually employ riders from their community for product delivery. The heavy traffic does not much impact the duration of two-wheeled deliveries.
- Choose the quick commerce stock carefully
Quick commerce works best for some specific product niches. Immediate delivery makes sense for cosmetics, drinks, food, or the consumers’ products each day.
Medicines and gifts are also good options for quick commerce delivery. As there has been a rise in work from home, electronics and office supplies have become a good candidate.
- Ensure to have the right software in place
If you want to make quick commerce function right for your business, you must have a real-time inventory management tool. It will help facilitate efficiency and speed while ensuring your online stock information is not wrong.
New future of eCommerce
The Covid-19 pandemic comes with the wholly disrupted behavior of consumer shopping. Even though few consumers return to shop in-stores, others are likely to stick with shopping online due to the inconvenience.
The use of quick commerce now has been put to an acceleration. However, it was already on a rise pre-pandemic. Now, these newly formed habits are not going anywhere. As quickly as commerce services are expanding, demand will keep growing the number of products in the market.
Conclusion
Quick commerce is relatively a newer term, and to date, it is an opportunity that is largely untapped in eCommerce. However, as consumers demand more convenient options, it is likely for quick commerce to grow.
On the flip side, it would be tough to know if it is right to grow your business; testing it out will not likely need much investment. You can also introduce it to one region per time, including adapting your strategy to suit the local area, assessing the results, and ironing out the kinks in the system.
