HYBRID RETAILER

“The concept of Hybridism is central for a sustainable retail business”

“The concept of Hybridism is central for a sustainable retail business”

Introduction

There is change in consumers and so the industry must also change. The retailing business has emerged over the years and is very different from the initial stages as now it is improved with better and larger innovation, integration and responsiveness. In the broad sense innovation is dealing with successful usage of ideas that eventually leads to a sustainable economic growth. The rapid change in customers demand has to be led businesses around the world to cater to these demands. To meet the customers' expectations and create loyalty the business should work on innovations. Retailing is a service that is considered to cater to the customer needs, but the hybrid economic activity has a major role to play (Kenis, 2005, 27-33). It helps in bridging between the production and the consumption as the businesses bring different sorts of goods that are in relevance to the consumers need.

Hybrid retail business offer many advantages and challenges as well. There are different models and theories that can be used in order to evaluate the type of retail operation which indicates that the hybrid retail stores provides the best combination of e-retail along with physical retail.

Hybrid model has the formula for successful retail business in future, thus it will provide sustainable retail business.

Discussion

In this era, traditional bricks and mortar stores are combining e commerce strategies in order to become more competitive with the pure e-retail businesses. Earlier, the perception was that the web based retail was a huge threat to the well established retailers for instance Sears, Wal-Mart etc. Initially the retail business was thought to be expensive as they would have to create a costly network of stores with a complex distribution network. However, the CEO and the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, gave a statement that a pure Web based retails are able to offer a wide variety of products and at a lower price always, than the traditional retail stores. This statement is not true completely and should be analyzed. There are many advantages of a physical retail stores as well.

As the time passed, the retail selling was combined with the electronic retail that is used universally. It eases the accessibility through the centralized process and distribution system as it is available 24 hours. There are advantages of the website as the customer can have the ease and the speed in shopping than the brick and mortar stores. This technology helps the businesses to personalize the shopping experience which makes the customer follow its interest profile. This process also allows personalized and effective shopping experience. The centralized and automated business processes helps in providing discounted products.

There are a few vertically integrated retailers which have their own design facilities and production units such as Migros in Switzerland, Tehibo (Germany) and S-Group in Finland. For example Migros is the one of the biggest Swiss retailer as well as second largest producer of chocolate ...