IMPLÉMENTATION D’UNE STRATÉGIE PHYGITALE POUR UNE ENTREPRISE DE PUÉRICULTURE SUR LE MARCHÉ DU RETAIL BELGE : LE CAS BABYKID.

Abstract

The retail sector has been severely changed by today's consumption patterns. The growth of e- commerce has a strong impact on retailers, as they can no longer rely only on their prices and promotions. The childcare sector also has to face a lower birth rate and a constant decrease in profit margin. This very competitive market remains an essential and promising sector. The customers always look for quality products with optimal safety standards for their children. The need for support and advice is even more important than before. This need for security and stores proximity is an opportunity for childcare stores to improve their services and more specifically the customer experience. The customer experience, composed of cognitive, affective, social and physical dimensions, brings about the customers loyalty and increases the number of transactions. A lot of retailers work on improving their strategy, notably through omnichannel, offering an optimized integration of physical and digital sales channels for customers. Phygital is a major improvement of this strategy for retailers. It offers digital tools to improve the customer experience, increase the point-of-sale traffic and the number of transactions. Different technologies can lead to these improvements and there are various ways to implement them in a business. BabyKid, a childcare company, very active in Wallonia, understood the importance of Phygital and implemented these technologies within the company. Hit by the worldwide pandemic, accelerating online consumption and the use of services such as “click and collect”, the phygital tools implemented by BabyKid allowed the company to continue its activity. Thanks to this new approach BabyKid managed to overcome the crisis and continue its activity. Today the example of BabyKid demonstrates the power of Phygital and the numerous benefits it can bring to businesses in the childcare sector as well as to other retailers.