According to Anchanto, high competition in the APAC e-retail market have retailers struggling to reduce potential gaps with competitors. There are very real challenges in analyzing sales performance and brand visibility, which can lead to decreased market share and revenue. With the online buying trend set to remain strong in 2024, there is an USD4 trillion e-commerce sales opportunity for these brand retailers to tap into. 

Anchanto opines that besides analyzing sales and brand visibility performance, brands must establish a strong presence and differentiation strategy to capture customer loyalty. Besides this, Anchanto country manager, Kamalanathan Magedran, also believes that accurate product data and maintaining control distribution networks are crucial to gaining consumer trust and delivering customer experience.

“ AI-driven analytics is just the tip of the iceberg of the game changer for online retail in Asia,” he said.

Digital Distribution – a Route to Raising CX Levels

Kamalanathan explained, “Control over their distribution networks (e-commerce sales channels like marketplaces) primarily refers here to gaining more visibility on their orders, sales, product listings, pricing, and inventory availability. “

The rationale is that by leveraging the distribution control that visibility offers, brands can ensure they have a lead in the market and aren’t losing out to retail practice violators. 

Easy access to sales performance across all their e-commerce channels ensures that brands know their total sales volume and GMV (gross merchandise value) from all sources including resellers. They can also monitor annual sales patterns based on past performance and customer responses.

This more accurate performance data means they can make data-driven decisions with detailed charts on best selling products across categories and channels. These are ideal scenarios, and reality could not be further for many brands on the various e-commerce platforms.

“The rationale is that by leveraging the distribution control that visibility offers, brands can ensure they have a lead in the market and aren’t losing out to retail practice violators. “

Current challenges

Visibility is key. And currently, brands lack visibility over their distribution network as they use multiple channels and third party platforms to sell their products online. Tracking sales through these networks is complicated as visibility is limited and performance reports are delayed, Kamalanathan pointed out.

Brands also struggle with product listing quality as third-party listings are difficult to assess and manage. Similarly, they are challenged with branding consistency when working with multiple third-party sellers. Pricing violations are another big challenge along with stock level management across distribution partners. Customer data and relationships are equally tough to extract and/or maintain. These outcomes collectively erode customer confidence in the brand and leave them vulnerable to competitors.

To overcome all these, brands require a tech infrastructure that facilitates digital shelf analytics, ready-to-use reports, retail health tracking, competitor performance insights, and price comparisons.

Visibility and responsiveness

Enhanced visibility over similar products by third parties allows brands to identify grey sellers, track their online activity, and flag price violations. That way, they can protect their brand value and minimize revenue loss. Moreover, they can monitor product variations and performance to identify trademark infringement.

Brands also expect visibility of their share of search on different sales platforms. “There is also  visibility of competing brands, products, pricing, as well as comparisons of search rankings and customer engagement levels,” Kamalanathan said.

Access to the most recent data on competition, helps with quick strategic response in the market to maneuvers made by competitors. Similarly, data and insights into sales performance and e-commerce channel performance can enable strategic responses that address customer experience.

Optimizing digital shelves across APAC

Luxasia, an omnichannel beauty service in SEA, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, brings popular beauty brands from all over the world, across niche, prestige, and premium categories, the likes of Guerlain, Hermès, Loewe, Paco Rabanne, or Calvin Klein. Since its inception in 1986, it has grown to over 2,000 retail touchpoints across 11 countries. 

Within a year of implementing Anchanto’s e-commerce management software, they achieved massive growth in terms of orders, SKUs, and revenue for all its brands.

In just eight months, Luxasia had brought 50 brands live online, across more than 220 shops and eCommerce platforms with Anchanto OMS, without any change or added cost to their backend operations or SAP customization. Significantly, they were able to reduce operational errors and maintain central control via  visibility with insights into each and every e-commerce order they receive.