Someone to shout at
One of the big reasons etail has often been able to out-compete bricks and mortar retail has been its lower overheads. With no physical store to maintain there is a significant saving on things like rent and staffing costs and that saving is passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.
In one sense everyone’s a winner but the biggest issue this raises is that of accountability. If you never have any direct, physical interaction with the company you’re buying from its can be more difficult to hold them to account if something goes wrong.
I must confess to being a reluctant etail customer myself at times as I feel nervous chucking my money out into the ether with no physical recipient I can have a go at if things don’t turn out as they’d led me to believe they would.
This reluctance is due largely to negative etail experiences in the past and that’s why companies like SCAN are not only keen to be seen as accountable themselves, but resent those companies that abuse the trust placed in them by consumers. Every negative etail experience potentially harms every etailer, not just the guilty party.
In the second part of his exclusive interview with HEXUS.channel, SCAN director of operations Elan Raja discusses why they sometimes have to raise prices, the drawbacks of buying from “the EDI boys” and why he thinks there’s still a need for an etailer to have a bricks and mortar presence.
Elan Raja TV interview, part 2
Elan Raja TV interview, part 1
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