Hectic daily routines, growing population, urbanization, and small households led to a priority for efficiency and convenience in eCommerce delivery. But, the COVID outbreak caused a turnaround in buying decisions and consumer demand. The customer journey shifted from purchasing foods from the offline market to online shopping with same-day delivery.
As per the survey by KPMG back in 2020 in the UK, a standard delivery time has been shortened from 4 days and 2-day delivery to next-day or same-day shipping. Around 43% of buyers preferred next-day delivery, with a hike of 4 percent from the previous year. Besides, more than 15% of consumers shifted to other brands if they delayed their delivery. The rising trend of quick shipping led to skyrocketing quick commerce, also known as Q-Commerce. It is a retail where goods shipment is made within an hour, even under 10 minutes. The rising demand for Q-Commerce has roots in consumer behavior and increasing expectations due to the recent pandemic.
In this post, you will learn everything about quick commerce with its benefits. We'll also share factors to keep in mind for Q-Commerce with the guide to execute this as a business.
What Is Quick Commerce?
Q-Commerce, or on-demand instant delivery, is a logistics and sales process that boosts the supply chain ecosystem and boosts restaurants, grocery chains, product manufacturers, and other eCommerce businesses to shop for products within 24 hours. According to a survey, around 40 percent of customers wish to pay for delivery on the same day. About 25 percent of people are willing to pay more for quicker delivery within a couple of hours after the order.
Changing consumer behavior and lifestyle directly helped the rise of quick commerce. Initially, the food delivery industry used this concept to deliver fresh food quickly. But, eCommerce businesses are constantly working hard to reduce delivery time, which has become a new trend worldwide.
How Fast Is Q-Commerce?
The lifestyle after the COVID pandemic and the increase in single-person households has led to a demand for products to be delivered online in small quantities as quickly as possible. This trend has helped various specific products, like medicines, foods, gifts, flowers, etc., to be delivered in large volumes.
To cater to the urban population, local shops that can reach more customers with less setup have restructured their setup with bricks and mortar warehouses. These online quick commerce shops can ship vast choices of products from your favorite store. But, it needs price management, logistics infrastructure, real time inventory management, assortment, etc.
What are the Important Quick Commerce Factors You Need to Consider?
1 Product Assortment
With increasing competition, getting accurate product assortment quickly in the eCommerce business can be challenging. To optimize this assortment, stores need to understand the demand difference according to stores and location. Considering that quick delivery is mainly needed for fresh and packed products, it is mandatory to maintain a unique assortment for each shop.
Data analysis of brisk commerce business will help to understand which products are being purchased too often from each store. It will help to find where you are lagging behind your competitors in terms of offering services. Further, assortment analytics will allow you to differentiate behavior depending on their demands. Ultimately, you can determine and optimize inventory management and logistics technology to serve better.
2. Price Optimization
Pricing data is readily available on these businesses. Using this data, consumers can compare prices before purchasing the product. Before deciding on products, buyers actively do the research for the best deals across various Q-Commerce platforms. According to a study, 31% of customers said their essential thought process to buy products was based on price comparisons. This experience means businesses need to optimize pricing strategies to be competitive in the market.
It doesn't mean optimizing pricing means offering discounts or reducing product prices. However, you can consider it a change in prices depending on competitors' prices without reducing much profit margin. It gives an edge to drive more sales by working on pricing management constantly.
3. Shipping Time
With quick commerce platforms giving tough competition with each other over the shorter shipping times, it has become a game changer nowadays. However, unexpected factors include congested traffic, last-moment customer requests, specific delivery window, etc. Optimizing delivery time can help improve operational efficiency through various factors.
A few big eCommerce giants like Amazon offer same-day shipping to prime members without additional fees on minimum order criteria.
4. Prediction of Product Demand
Since Q-Commerce is a go-to solution for a few products, businesses must discover those products, what customers demand, and when they need them. Historical data can help you forecast the future customer demand pattern. Further, it helps quick commerce firms to manage inventory according to the pattern defined using demand forecasting and maintain supply chain management for the business.
What Are The Advantages Of Quick Commerce?
1. Competitive Unique Selling Proposition
Quick commerce platforms get the latest value proposition because buyers are switching to other brands or stores if they get delivery slowly. This led to increasing competition for Q-Commerce businesses across the global marketplace.
We at Product Data Scrape have helped Quick service restaurants and other quick service firms to explore quick commerce in collaboration with logistics and delivery platforms to boost sales using our data scraping solutions.
2. Increase Profit Margins
According to the Deloitte study, around half of online buyers pay extra to get the product delivered quickly and conveniently in online shopping. Since product assortment in Q-Commerce is relatively less, businesses in this category can generate more profits. It is possible due to rich geographical locations where people need instant delivery. These buyers value time over discounts.
3. The Paramounted Customer Experience
Quick eCommerce allows retail businesses to match customer expectations and earn brand trust. Further, quick delivery systems allow understanding of users' pain points, such as running out of food, being tired from the office in the evening, etc.
How To Execute Quick Commerce?
Local Hub Requirements
To pack and ship products within an hour, businesses must be operational near the buyer's location. Having a warehouse near the customer location can help to serve quickly, considering bike duration will have little impact on heavy traffic.
Track Analytics with Accurate Tool
Monitoring stock and showing that to customers through an app or website during the online order is another major factor in quick commerce business. It also helps businesses in managing real-time inventory. And if there is any shortage, businesses can order or arrange products from other branches to prevent a drop in sales.
Stock Assortment and Availability
Quick E-commerce in daily needs delivery space is great for products like vegetables, fresh foods, cosmetics, drinks, packed foods, and other groceries.
Here, stock Assortment plays an important role for QSRs like Burger King and Pizza Hut to generate around 75% of total sales using quick delivery services. These businesses need to work on in-demand product assortment.
Conclusion
The growth of Q-Commerce represents the upcoming revolution in eCommerce with the shift in consumer behavior toward food and grocery shopping. When placed with proper pricing and assortment, instant delivery services can allow businesses to attract buyers who need products delivered quickly. By getting big data from the market, these businesses can get analytics of user demands.
Suppose you're in quick commerce to deliver groceries and food. In that case, we at Product Data Scrape are ready to help you understand delivery time management, product assortment, pricing strategy, and many more to be successful in the Quick Commerce market; contact us to know more.
