Online to offline commerce increases connectivity through partnerships and innovations

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The Online to Offline (O2O) commerce thrives on connectivity. It serves as the lifeline for establishing and increasing customer base. It includes the physical delivery of goods for online purchases and virtual connections which occur during the purchases. There has been certain strategic partnership around the globe which has been influencing these two fronts in the most unique ways. The international O2O commerce is accommodating new innovations and partnership ideas for improved reach out to customer base, better market understanding and service structure.

Firstly, the Pan Asian investment company, Lippo Group, who recently invested USD 500 million on the online business of Matahari department store chain, called the MatahariMall, also entered into a partnership with Grab, the transport hailing application. Grab Indonesia and Lippo have stated this partnership to be beneficial at both ends. It has been noted that, during the third quarter of 2015, the rival of Matahari Mall Tokopedia entered into a similar partnership with Go-Jek. Go-Jek has evolved to be a significant player in the courier delivery segment over the past years and has also been a delivery partner for Lazada Indonesia.

Walking along the similar lines, the Lippo joined hands with Grab for enhanced delivery experience and customer satisfaction across Indonesia. The initial investment of Lippo into the Matahari facilitated the customers to pick up their online purchases from the Lippo stores present across Indonesia. The partnership with Grab is expected to be advantageous in understanding the local preferences to a better level as stated by the brand. The Grab is currently one of the major shareholders of the private car segment in Indonesia contributing to more than 50% as of 2015, even after the presence of tough competitors like Uber and Go-Jek. It holds the best knowledge about local customer preferences, conventions and communications and the combined effort is expected to benefit both the brands and increase the presence.

Secondly, Paytm, the popular online payment portal in India has also made progress towards Online to Offline connectivity. The brand is already working towards the accommodation of cashless payments via the mobile wallet scheme. There is another issue which remains specific to India, the below par internet connection across the country in comparison to USA and European countries. Due to this, in certain cases, it has been observed that the online payment transactions fail if the internet connectivity drops and the customer has to undergo the entire process again. However, despite, this issue, the cashless payment method is preferred by most online shoppers. Paytm has devised a process to overcome the inconvenience. While paying, the customer details like account balance and others are saved by Paytm. So, when the customer and merchant connectivity is restored, the transaction details are automatically synced for processing. On the merchant end, the Paytm customer displays a unique barcode generated for the transaction; the merchant scans the barcode and completes the purchase. On the customer end, this process can be facilitated with the onetime password generation which is unique and safe.