How the expected crisis will affect Brands?

As the whole world copes with the Coronavirus, businesses have been navigating to find their best response to the pandemic. With most countries under some kind of lockdown and stay-at-home order, there is almost no retailer or brand that hasn’t been affected. This particularly stands for those that have brick-and-mortar stores. The majority of them needed to close. Even those who’ve remained opened have seen a decrease in customer traffic due to the online shop orderings increase.

Depending on the way that their economy is structured, countries are trying to come up with an efficient solution. Governments are considering different economic support measures, but global inflation won’t be avoided. 

Research done by Emarsys and GoodData shows that eCommerce revenue in the United States is up 42 percent year over year. Therefore is needless to say how important it is to have an eCommerce website that is well-optimized.

Brands who have already invested time and effort into making a user-friendly website are for sure in a better position. But, everything isn’t lost yet for those who didn’t think about this on time. Brands should think about how they can sell their products online and better communicate this option to their customers. It’s expected that the purchase price will increase, as well as the business costs which will result in the price increase of all retailers in the market. 

In our previous blog post, we’ve discussed how the coronavirus outbreak will affect retailers, but now we’ll see what there is to be done in the case of the brands. 

1. Check how retailers are responding to the market disruptions

In these difficult times, every business is affected differently. Therefore it’s essential to become aware of how retailers are responding to the market changes. Some of them might have changed the previous conditions, so your first step should always be to check if the previous agreement still stands. If you are notified that there will be a change in the way they do business, you need to consider it very carefully and make a decision if it’s something you should agree with or not. 

Also, there are changes that are out of the retailers’ hands – shopping malls are closed, and therefore everyone is relying on online ordering. For those who are still working, the working hours are reduced, there are limits to how many items customers can purchase and these items are being prioritized for restocking. 

Aislelabs did very detailed research on how things are changing in the retail environment across the globe. You’ll see that even the world’s biggest retailers are struggling and that the actions that you as a brand might want to take are not completely in your hands.

That brings us to our next point.

2. You want to change the MAP – here is what you need to consider

One of the first things brands are pushing for in these kinds of a situation is changing the price. That can be a good decision, but when it comes to deciding whether you should change the MAP (minimal advertised price) you need to be very careful. If you are going to change the MAP – you should carefully monitor how the retailers will stick to them.

But, what is the best way to do this?

There are price monitoring tools available on the market that can help you with this task, and Price2Spy being one of them. Price2Spy has mechanisms to alert you when an online store (either your competitor or your retailer) violates this price. Users can easily spot such violations since they will be indicated by alert mails and various reports that Price2Spy has to offer.

Lessons learned

While this is an extremely challenging period for retailers/brands and customers as well, it’s also clearer how important eCommerce has become. All those brands who had second thoughts about having an eCommerce store, now are completely sure where they must direct their attention to.

Since we know that making a leap into the unknown can be hard, we offer you a 30-day free trial so you can test all the possibilities that Price2Spy can offer! 

What changes have you implemented in your business due to the Coronavirus outbreak? Share your experience with us in the comment section below!