August 3, 2022 
The pandemic has made consumers adopt the digital purchasing pattern shortly. And e-commerce is also on the verge of accelerating in the market, whereas physical stores do not eliminate from the market. The online and offline modes of shopping are still in demand, but the digital one is quite trending to raise sales in the market. The online market is booming to the next level to fulfil customers’ choices and desires by collecting their data through various social media like Facebook, Instagram and many more. They try to update the customer wishes on their dashboard to proceed with the campaign, advertisement or promotion in a favourable way to hike the retail sales in a significant way.
In this article, we will talk about three key trends that will shape Asia Retail in 2022 are mentioned below:
Shopping in the metaverse
The metaverse has no boundaries and rules like other online RPGs (role-playing games). These days gaming industries have been ruling the Asia Pacific region over movies, music and other entertainment. Such sectors will gain a revenue of $41 billion by 2025.
Metaverse is a virtual concept that gives other sectors like education, wellness, entertainment, commerce and community under one umbrella and in one domain. The online ideas and physical worlds combine to provide space to socialize the concept and build a great relationship to have a community of their own.
The online surfing of the browser helps communicate the product brand personally and shows a way to connect with virtual space for engagement and discovery of the products. The metaverse users help engage, participate and create the virtual set-up to run the brand products. Such brands quickly react to the upcoming trends and fulfil the consumer needs and wish based on virtual entities. Soon the metaverse will capture the ownership of the digital world or the virtual homes.
The founder of fashion-focused NFT platform BNV, Richard Hobbs, mentioned that the good part of the digital estate is that there is no need to negotiate financial queries for deposits and
build-outs.
The need of the time is to bring the brands online and get covered on all grounds and platforms to fetch the large crowd towards it. When foreign brands were facing issues entering the Asia markets, the metaverse made it easy to connect the enormous audience for a borderless and limitless approach.
Tokenized Communities
Such communities take a step forward to socially connect and decentralize the network to get the attention of the vast crowd. This led to tokenizing communities and brands, also known as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). The membership is made under the democratic rule, and works are tracked with social tokens, a type of cryptocurrency.
The digital communities combine with a group of individuals to build a fan base and a creator. Such membership gives the democratized privileges and vote to the product and follows government norms and policies. In return, it helps in getting participation tokens, the community’s contribution towards the work, and the investment.
DAOs have a two-way ecosystem to perform for their most trusted and excellent fan base. It looks for the creators, community members and contributors to own the virtual world for the community’s growth and success. The participants are growing in such an environment from all backgrounds that involve high-profile expertise and skills. Decentraland’s DAO votes and governs the virtual land and manages the process firmly.
Decentraland acts as a widespread metaverse for fashion brands. It has a governing structure to look into virtual ownership. Such virtual space gains $2.43 million in cryptocurrency to make a fashion hub in the plot.
Retailers are trying to establish the metaverse environments in London, Tokyo, and Paris.
And put down to sell in the digital world, such as NFTs and integrated e-commerce transactions.
In terms of loyalty, the offers, rewards and coupons are provided for the short-term to fetch the vast audience’s attention significantly.
Dark Stores
E-commerce is growing these days in densely-populated cities. It benefits congested areas like Jakarta and Bangkok to provide leverage to a warehouse set up for easy access to the delivery of the stock to the consumer in real-time. The pandemic has turned the sales upside down and diversely disturbed the supply chain. And the retailers are affected significantly to fulfil the market needs and customer satisfaction.
According to Colliers International, around 85,000 square metres of the warehouse is required for $1 billion in sales online. And the micro-fulfilment centres are placed in smaller urban sites or the existing physical stores to make the process easy.
Such retail stores use the best infrastructure to manage the business model and the best technology to get updated with the work and keep track of the flow of the brand products in and out of the warehouse. And the dark stores use small players to achieve the target with total efficiency on demand.
With the advent of technology, consumer expectations are growing. Whereas many Asian consumers get their orders placed with the help of messenger or chat-based apps like WhatsApp. And in case the consumer demands are not fulfilled, they get impatient with the e-commerce service delivery in real-time.
The need for time is to deliver the consumer demand, and optimizing the process is an excellent way to steady the workflow. The use of tools and updated software are needed to keep track of the process and significantly maintain workflow transparency.
The latest trend, as mentioned above, is the best way to rule the market in terms of sales channels and attract the customer toward their brand product needs of the time. And they ensure to keep the data safe and secure both the personal and the transaction to eliminate the fraud or duplication of the information. Such a trend is good to go with the time to enhance the Asia Retail in 2022 with the right approach and sophisticated strategies for the growth of either direction.
