It is said that the one who lasts is the one who changes, Covid-19 pandemic resulted in many businesses having to adapt to lockdown and quickly find new solutions to survive in an emerging new world.

In such troublesome times consumers couldn’t go out and buy their household goods and necessities while businesses weren’t able to sell their products either, at that time businesses had to quickly adapt in order to survive and eCommerce was the way to go as it was apparent that eCommerce is already on the rise, according to UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) global e-commerce sales jumped to $26.7 trillion in 2019, about 4% increase from 2018 and many speculated that is this is the beginning.

As the competition got fierce between businesses on who reigns supreme there was a huge need for an improved eCommerce module that provides more convenience for consumers and pushes them to order online more frequent and therefore more focus had to be shifted towards Q-commerce

So what is Q-commerce? As apparent from the letter Q stands for quick and some believe that it is the next stage of eCommerce where more focus is on speed of delivery where items are usually delivered in under 1 hour or even less (the duration of course differs from one country to another). Q-commerce wasn’t an entirely new concept as it is debated that many businesses including McDonalds had somewhat of a similar concept which is having a small number of items that can be delivered very quickly and faster than typical delivery times, another important argument is since fast-food restaurants had already started delivering in 30 minutes or less than that why can’t other product categories adopt this especially with latest innovations in last mile delivery and customer journey personalization?

So how important are speed and personalized experience for customers and how did the pandemic change consumer habits?

In the last few years businesses have made tremendous progress in their digital transformation efforts which according to Forbes has also impacted consumer behavior, consumers who used to like to visit nearby stores to buy their home items many of them now prefer to buy online due to its incredible convenience and year over year improvement in delivery times adding to this a new culture of WFH (work from home) has started which also pushed more changes, but consumers don’t want speed only they want personalized experience in a study by Accenture it was stated that 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to enable a personalized experience this was also more evident when it was showed that 73% of consumers showed frustration when they don’t find personalized experience.

So the above confirms how important personalized is but to what can be personalized in the consumer journey?

The short answer is a lot! Examples include creating ads targeting potential customers with products that they are likely to be interested in based on their add to cart behaviors, interests, preferences and more (other attributes can also be used), email campaigns and personalizing them according to the customer interests, personalized product recommendations on website and app using customer data,..etc.

So hypothetically a brand has already started working on adding personalized experiences to customers in their Q-commerce activities. What is expected from this? As a starting point conversion rates are drastically improved, a study that was shared on Statista for a survey done to U.S marketers in March 2020 and the conclusion of this survey that about 63% saw that improved conversion rates as one of the main benefits of personalization, secondary since now we know that personalization affects conversion so what is next important metric? It is AOV according to Bigcommerce the increase that personalization can achieve can reach up to 12%% increase, lastly customer convenience and satisfaction according to Numerator in a blog article written by Shopify it is stated that 87% of millennials believe that personalization affects their decision making and this confirms that when a brand helps customers get an experience that is relevant and personalized this will positively affect their purchasing behavior and journey and decrease churning customers.

In Covid 19 churning customers started to be a bigger problem as shown when McKinsey stated in a study that almost Three-quarters of consumers switched to a new store, product, or buying method during the pandemic putting enormous pressure on companies to provide more convenience as well as provide more value to customers to avoid customer churn, it was clear to everyone that customer loyalty is at risk, so companies had to step up their game by finally transforming to Q-commerce and combine that with personalization but many brands as of yet haven’t done the shift to Q-commerce leading to many of them not achieving the improvement many others have done by using Q-commerce with personalization.

So according to many statistics while combining Q-commerce and personalization performance massively well for brands it is not easy to perfect and lots of work must be done including and not limited to studying competitors, analyzing market gap, delivery planning, having at top tier dynamic advertising and data management and lots of other things to perfect Q-commerce and have powerful personalization module on top of that.

Before a brand invests in Q-Commerce it must ask a very important question, is Q-commerce right for their business or not?

Reference list:

What’s Next For Q-Commerce: The Golden Child Of E-Commerce (forbes.com)

Q-Commerce, the new age of E-commerce – The Strategy Story

The value of getting personalization right—or wrong—is multiplying | McKinsey

Quick Commerce Last Mile Delivery: Indispensable Or Superfluous? – Forbes India

Global e-commerce jumps to $26.7 trillion, COVID-19 boosts online sales | UNCTAD

Monetate-Customer-Journey-eBook-FINAL.pdf

How Personalized Product Recommendations Increase AOV (bigcommerce.com)