Contactless services and customer value. Lessons from a Chinese boss
Intime Retail has been controlled by Alibaba since 2017.
In China, Intime Retail (65 department stores and shopping centres plus the Miaojie e-commerce app.) has already reported activity back to 2019 levels. The Covid-19 crisis has allowed considerable expansion of e-commerce. “During stores closure, e-commerce retained 35% of previous sales” said C.E.O. Xiaodong Chen. By May 2020, we returned to last year’s level of sales despite a 70% drop in visitors. Our rate of conversion from enquiry to sale has increased. In 1 year, e-commerce has risen from 5% of trade to more than 20%, and it should reach 50% by next spring”.
To support this growth, Intime Retail digitised 92% of all services for online. Even more critically, all services and in-store support are now integrated directly with e-commerce. An example is that Intime offers a home fitting service to customers who subscribe to the loyalty programme “Intime 365”. They must live less than 10 km from a store.
