Experience Store Becomes Ramayana's Strategy to Get E-Commerce Consumers

Ramayana is one of the retailers affected by the declining purchasing power of the Indonesian people. In 2017, at least eight shops were closed. However, recently Ramayana opened a new outlet, this time with a more modern strategy.

His party is quite aware of its current strength in offline stores, however, it must be quick to deal with market share that has gone digital. The approach taken with the new store is in the form of an Experience Store, in collaboration with Lazada Indonesia.

The Experience Store concept is a physical store that serves products sold from e-commerce services. For the first time, the focus will be on electronic products, with the hope of facilitating customers who are unsure of the shape or price of goods found on online sites.

Quoted from Indonesian CNN Ramayana General Marketing Jane Melinda Tumewu said, "Indeed, nowadays we buy electronic goods online, but because the prices are high, people need physical stores as a comparison. Therefore, Ramayana is collaborating with Lazada to develop an Experience Store."

In addition, there is another partnership that Ramayana has made with Lazada, namely by opening the Ramayana Official Store on Lazada. This is expected to make Ramayana able to maximize Harbolnas momentum. Melinda said, "Through this event (cooperation), we also want to show online consumers that with the change towards the present era, Ramayana still exists today."

So is it true because? E-commerce?

Apart from Ramayana, there are actually several other retail outlets that have had bad luck in recent times. Those who also had time to close their outlets included 7-Eleven, Matahari, as well as Lotus Department Store. When many people say that the reason is because consumers are turning to online, Tokopedia CEO William Tanuwijaya has a different opinion.

According to William It is not true that offline retailers are closing because e-commerce market share has been displaced, because according to the data he has, only 1 percent of retail transactions in Indonesia go online. So the concentration of observations must be focused on general macroeconomic conditions.

"I think the trend is that online and offline stores will actually need each other in the future," said William.

Likewise, according to the General Chair of iDEA, Aulia Ersyah Marinto. He refuses if the online business is the cause of the collapse of some offline retail businesses today. According to him, they closed because they were doing repositioning, not because the market was completely taken by online players.

The online-offline synergy is starting to take shape

The Experience Store model has actually become a trend in Indonesia, although not in a formal form. For example, buying coffee at Starbucks through GO-FOOD, operationally it is a synergy model between offline and online. That seems likely to be widely applied in the future – except for companies that choose to build their own systems.

But it is inevitable if there are challenges facing retail companies. For example, the existence of e-commerce and marketplaces can provide an opportunity for brands to provide supply directly owned products in the form of an Official Store, as has been done a lot at this time. So if producers can sell directly, the role of offline retail must be considered more carefully, in order to provide a better experience for consumers.