September 4, 2021 
The retail landscape has evolved over the decades. Technological advancements, breakthrough innovations, and the introduction of humongous sales and marketing mediums have paved the way for this transformation. Meeting customer expectations is no longer enough; customers expect to be delighted. Given the wide-scale internet penetration, tech-savvy customers’ multi-device usage, research on products before making the actual purchase has become the norm. And, this has given rise to the omnichannel retail strategy, which has been adopted by individual retailers and established retail brands across the globe in a steady manner. In this article, we will be discussing the state of omnichannel retail in Indonesia, the challenges, and the way ahead.
To start with, Indonesia with a population of 270 million is deemed one of the largest countries, and in fact, the fourth largest country in Southeast Asia. And, more than half of this population is under the age of 30. Indonesia is also home to a rapidly growing working-class population with a succinct income opportunity, and scope for expenditure on eCommerce. According to the Google Consumer Barometer Survey, 81% of Indonesians prefer a mobile device to access the internet while only a minuscule of 3% is relying on desktop computers. Similarly, close to 87% of shopping is undertaken on mobile devices. Simply put, Indonesia is a fertile landscape for B2C marketers that come equipped with the omnichannel retail strategy.
State of Omnichannel in Indonesia
Marketing Concepts
As we have already covered in the article, Indonesia is home to a vast majority of millennials, who rely on mobile devices for accessing the internet. This opens up a lot of opportunities and avenues for B2C marketers to hash out their strategies. Real-time marketing, 360-degree customer view, omnichannel delivery, and engagement, personalization, customer journey mapping, AI, and CDP have been some of the most leveraged marketing concepts in Indonesia among which real-time marketing seems to have garnered greater results.
Integrated Approach to Customer Engagement
Omnichannel retail is all about offering the end customer a seamless, consistent, and well-integrated experience across all the sales, and marketing channels. While most Indonesian marketers have seconded the significance of the integrated approach, less than 30% of them somewhat agreed about leveraging the same for their own omnichannel strategy. Indonesian marketers are yet to go full-fledged when it comes to leveraging first, second, and third-party customer data to drive success-oriented, and meaningful engagements.
Scalable Solutions
With quite a large population, Indonesian marketers are yet to craft, and leverage tech-enabled solutions to scale their retail and operations. While the population is omnichannel-ready, marketers are yet to overcome the early MarTech challenges to move ahead.
Data Management
Data management is key to business success, especially when it is about driving customer engagement and conversions. Indonesian marketers seem to have several challenges in the data management sphere. Firstly, there is incomplete customer data lying across multiple channels due to poor integration across the systems and evidently, there is too much data at hand to manage, analyze, and derive actionable insights. Technology limitations, lack of analytics, data segmentation capabilities, inability to act on real-time data and disparate technology platforms are some of the other key challenges Indonesian marketers have to contend with.
Concluding Thoughts
Getting ready to go omnichannel and executing it successfully for a 270 million populace is going to stay a challenge for Indonesian marketers. However, these working challenges that the marketing practitioners face can pave the way for greater insights, and learning opportunities, which will act to reshape the future marketers of Indonesia.
Got more questions on omnichannel? Do connect with the experts at Vinculum, today!
