BENGALURU: Brick-and-mortar retailers such as Lifestyle International, Shoppers Stop and Arvind Fashions are tweaking their merchandise mix or using technology to attract younger consumers who shop online.
“The footfall of 18-22 year olds shrank by about 4% last year,” said Vasanth Kumar, managing director of Lifestyle International, adding that tablets to browse collections, a digital fitting-room assistant to alert the staff for product sizes and smart self-checkout services have been installed at key locations. “Making the time-starved and tech-savvy segment come to the store is our focus this year. The tech initiatives have been made keeping millennials in mind to reduce their pain points.”
India has a median population age of 27.3 years compared with 35 years for China and about 47 years for Japan and it is estimated that the country has about 390 million millennials and about 440 million in the Gen-Z cohort, according to a recent study by consulting firm Deloitte. Experts said this generation is the first to witness and use technology and the internet for shopping.
According to Anil Talreja, partner at Deloitte India, shopping on the couch, indifference towards look-and-feel, and security and ease of using credit cards or online payment channels are factors that have hooked millennials to online shopping.
More than 40% of shoppers who purchased clothes in an offline store in the past 12 months are willing to consider moving online, according to a recent Morgan Stanley report. Retailers that still haven’t caught up with the millennials could lose out, experts said.
Arvind Fashions, which runs the stores of global brands including Gap, US Polo Association, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, is piloting a tech concept where it can map the landscape and the time spent by passers-by and window shoppers, which may help it plan visual merchandising to attract customers. “Installing in-store tech gizmos need not benefit the consumer. The idea is to optimise tech to gauge the mindset of the millennial consumer and create a seamless online-offline shopping experience,” said J Suresh, managing director of Arvind Fashions.
Over the past few years, Amazon and Flipkart have grabbed a significant chunk of the online market by deep-discounting products, which hurt the revenue growth of most retailers, especially in the electronics and lifestyle segments. However, with the recent tightening of norms that restrict exclusive contracts and private labels, discounting could come off and consumers could look beyond price tags.
Shoppers Stop, which has been reducing the number of discounting days, said it is using celebrity brands and digital campaigns to attract millennials. Less than a fortnight ago, it used Facebook’s augmented reality technology to launch youth brand Kendall and Kylie at its store in Mumbai.
Influencers and young shoppers posed with the computer-generated bags superimposed in the real world for social media handles that helped the retailer receive online-offline attention.
“We have launched the brand for the young audience. It is probably the first launch in India using augmented reality,” said Rajiv Suri, managing director of Shoppers Stop.