BlibliMart store is the latest innovation from Indonesia-based e-commerce platform Blibli. The brick-and-mortar retail store uses a cashless and cashier-less shopping system, with shopkeepers available to check their purchases after the payment is made.
Blibli’s move with its grocery brand BlibliMart is aimed at establishing an offline presence to complement the growing BlibliMart online grocery store, as reported by The Jakarta Post.
With its cashless and cashier-less shopping experience, it seeks to cater to millennials’ fast-and-cheap shopping preferences. By using the Blibli app on their smartphone, customers can scan the product barcode and pay using the Blipay digital payment service or the GoPay payment app by gojek.
Blibli senior vice president of trade partnership Fransisca Krisantia Nugraha emphasise that 66 per cent of shoppers are omnichannel shoppers.
“It means they are the type of shoppers that use both online and offline platforms for their shopping needs. That’s why the retail store will hopefully bring us to these omnichannel [consumers],” said Nugraha.
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The store, which is located at the Sarana Jaya building in Central Jakarta, adopts a similar shopping experience in US-based convenience store Amazon Go, that allows customers to purchase groceries and other goods without any cashier checkout or clerk interactions.
The test run started in November last year and according to Nugraha, the retail store had recorded more than 1,000 orders daily.
However, unlike Amazon Go, BlibliMart retail store shopping still needs former customers to check out their purchases with a shopkeeper to prevent theft.
“Because there is currently no applicable technology solution [to prevent theft] in Indonesia,” Nugraha said.
“There are still a lot of questions from the customers, and there are a lot of connection problems too, so we provide free Wi-Fi for the customers,” Nugraha added.
According to the company’s vice president of development Sherwin Sasmita, in facilitating customers with such experience, Blibli uses its online consumer data to determine the product preferences of consumers near the store to ensure suitable product selection and stock availability.
“We can identify the market segment. We can identify what people in Jakarta buy from our online data, what people in the area [of the store] buy,” Sasmita said.
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Nugraha said Indonesia had a US$200 billion grocery market opportunity, with 1 per cent, or a US$2 billion market potential, forecast for e-commerce.
Aside from the addition of retail stores, the company also plans to strengthen its online service by providing scheduled delivery, product subscription, and in-store pickup services through a partnership with third-party retailers.
In Indonesia, e-commerce platforms are embracing offline retail to complement their existing online presence. From beauty and fashion platforms such as Social Bella and Berrybenka to mom-and-pop store platforms such as Warung Pintar.
Even Chinese e-commerce platform such as JD has also tested an offline retail store in Indonesia.
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