Online Stores vs Physical Stores
A Solution to a never-ending Debate
Retailers have been debating over physical and online stores for years. While the rise of e-commerce and online shopping has kept growing lately without showing signs to stop any time soon, there’s still a good argument in favor of going to an actual store and seeing what you’re about to buy with your own eyes before making a purchase.
Each shopping method comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, so today we’d like to explore the differences between them to paint a better picture for you.
It’s not as easy as asking which one is better
Every business is different, that’s why you need to consider your goals, your product, and your target audience before you make a decision.
However, we’d like to go one step further and see if there’s a way for physical and online shopping to work together instead of against each other.
Is online shopping really killing physical stores? Do users still prefer to buy in-store? Let’s put these myths to rest!
The Advantages of Online Shopping
💰 Lower Costs than a Physical Store
Generally speaking, when it comes to opening an online store it will be much cheaper than opening a physical store. First, you don’t need to rent a real space to start making sales, while you also can save on utility bills like electricity, water, and other basic services.
Most of the administrative costs will come from web hosting and technical support. Which means you only have to pay to keep your website running each month, leaving only the fees related to shipping and online payments to be paid in addition.
Otherwise, you don’t have to worry about infrastructure, decorations inside the shop, cashiers, etc. You can manage more elements just by yourself or hire a more select group of employees to help you out with programming and web design, and that doesn’t have to happen every month anyway.
It still can be expensive to open an e-commerce platform, but definitely less expensive than the alternative brick and mortar store.
📅 Your Store is Open All Day, Every Day
One of the biggest advantages of running an online store is that your business is operating 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
You never have to close your shop, so you can make sales even while sleeping. Once everything is set up, the rest takes care of itself.
For a physical store, you have to rely on a strict schedule and depend on your employees to close the sales, which is why an online store provides much more freedom in that regard.
You can take the day off for the holidays while your e-commerce keeps earning passive income!
🌎 New Customers from a Growing International Market
Another big advantage of running an online business is that you can break the physical barriers of your store and expand to new markets around the world.
You’re not dependent on how many clients pass by your physical store every day because there’s a limitless amount of potential customers on the Internet. Local businesses can only attract a certain number of customers per day, but an online store is open worldwide at all times.
If you focus on a good marketing strategy and the development of a quality product, your clients will come to your shop through the universal language of shopping.
The Advantages of Physical Shopping
We’ve already seen some of the benefits of online shopping, but physical stores are still on top in certain areas that virtual shops just can’t deliver as effectively.
🛒 Customers Want to Feel & Touch the Inventory
Have you ever seen an awesome piece of clothing online and decided to buy it instantly, but when it arrived at your house it looked nothing like the picture? Or it plainly didn’t fit you despite ordering the right size? The internet is filled with pictures like that
This is one of the most common issues when buying online, which gives physical shops a good advantage because when you shop in person, what you see is what you get.
Many customers prefer to touch the products before they buy them to feel the quality and make sure it’s exactly what they want.
Some customers like the whole experience of shopping and testing clothes, fragrances, and other products before making a decision.
🚗 Not Every Product is Easy to Sell Online
Sure, you can buy a pair of shoes, a video game or a smartphone online, but what about a wedding ring or a car?
Some products are just not made to be sold online due to their high value. Jewelry, furniture, antiques, vehicles, among others, are just some of those items that customers prefer to buy in a physical store. Retailers should also take into consideration how many items they have in their inventory for each product.
When it comes to luxury items that are more scarce, it’s probably a better idea to sell them in a physical store, while an e-commerce platform may be better fit for products with a bigger stock and affordable price.
🏪 More Control Over the Competition
When you open a store in the street or in a shopping mall you can easily figure out what are the other stores that are selling similar products and aiming at the same target audience than you.
However, when it comes to your online store it’s you vs. the world. There’s a countless amount of businesses that are selling the same product and many are already big & established brands so it might be difficult to stand out from the crowd. If you want to find an online audience, it will depend on how special your product is in relation to the competition.
If you prefer to have more control over your competition instead of walking into a saturated market, a physical store might be a better alternative.
How to solve this debate?
As you can see, there are pros and cons to each side of the coin. How can retailers decide where to focus their resources to get better results? The easy answer is: it depends.
It depends on their product and their priorities based on what we explained before. However, there’s a third option to end this debate.
You don’t really have to pick a side because both physical and online shopping should compliment each other.
That’s what we’re trying to accomplish with Reckoon.
We want to connect both shopping journeys in the same place. Sometimes the in-store stock & online stock are not in sync or there are deals that are only available online. This might seem like a minor inconvenience, but in reality, it’s affecting the entire experience of consumers.
People want different options for different occasions. Sometimes they prefer to buy an item in person, but other times they don’t want to get out of the house and will buy online.
Retailers should be ready to cover for both occasions instead of fighting over which side is better.
That’s where Reckoon comes in! We’re uniting physical and online stores in a single one-stop global shopping platform boosted by blockchain and AI technology.
Our focus is on personalization as we plan to provide users with a WishBasket, where they can add items to their list and get deals & recommendations based on what they actually like with geo-specific alerts.
Everything will be coordinated for both shopping methods, just like it should be.
Support our project by joining our upcoming Pre-IEO starting from February 25th to April 8th.
Launchpad: ExMarkets
Token symbol: ROOK
IEO Price: $0.20
Softcap: $300,000
Bonuses: Up to 50%
Platform: EthereumIEO: Stage 1
Mar 10, 2020 — Mar 24, 2020IEO: Stage 2
Mar 25, 2020 — Apr 08, 2020
