Lippo Group

Aug 31, 2023

August 30, 2023 Suara.com – Lippo Group Executive Director John Riady said the omnichannel strategy is a step that retailers in the country must adopt, amidst the threat of increasingly quiet shopping centers or malls after the pandemic. According to John, the implementation of omnichannel is carried out by retailers to integrate digital and physical services. This is gaining momentum when the pandemic has changed people’s consumption and spending patterns so that they become more familiar online. However, physical services still exist and the moment seemed to turn around when restrictions on people’s mobility were relaxed. “The omnichannel strategy is like a hook for retail industry players to lure new opportunities to get high sales turnover. In this case, people can transact physically, but actually the pattern has changed,” said John in a written statement, Thursday (31/8/2023). Read Also:Taipan James Riady Will Increase Capital for Bank Nobu He pointed out that the adoption of omnichannel made retail issuer PT Matahari Department Store Tbk. (LPPF) posted net revenue of IDR 3.85 trillion in semester I/2023. This achievement increased by 2.39% compared to semester I/2022 of IDR 3.76 trillion. LPPF’s growth is in line with the household consumption sector which is still the largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is around 2.77% of the total GDP growth in Semester I/2023 of 5.17%. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) noted that increased household consumption is the biggest buffer for the national economy. This is in line with controlled inflation and the celebration of religious holidays which fell last quarter. On the other hand, as people’s mobility becomes more normal and the stability of the national economy, household consumption also grows significantly. This household sector recorded the highest growth, which was around 5.23%. John also assessed that improvement at the macro level could also be reflected in the recovery in the performance of the retail industry sector. Until semester I/2023, many companies engaged in the retail sector achieved performance growth. Read Also:The Fate of the Homeland Property Market After the Pandemic, Are You Still Gaining or Gaining? He considered LPPF’s achievement to be a trend of improving this performance to continue the recovery that has occurred since the beginning of the year. The same thing happened to several other retail issuers. For example, AMRT and MIDI, during the first half of this year, managed to boost performance growth to double digits. “Retail issuers are starting to turn green, but along with that there is the opposite reality, many modern shopping centers are also closing outlets or changing their business focus. A reasonable choice for service efficiency and innovation. The retail sector is indeed gaining momentum for recovery, but the strategy chosen must also be right,” explained John. Furthermore, John revealed that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic had not been fully resolved by retail industry players. “When Covid-19 hit performance, and made actors to close operations, strategic maturity was needed so they could rise when the momentum came. It’s just that the strategies chosen vary, for us at Lippo Group we believe there are alternative futures for the retail sector,” he said. An alternative strategy that is a necessity for the retail sector is often termed omnichannel, which integrates digital and physical services as an adoption of people’s consumption patterns that have changed after the Covid-19 pandemic. He admitted that in general, consumers tend to still want direct interaction with goods and services, but digital penetration cannot be ignored. Therefore, the retail sector must also be ready to carry out various innovations to increase added value for consumers. According to John, Indonesia’s huge retail market is indeed very promising, but it is filled with very tight competition. Therefore, the key to the success of the retail sector is innovation that marries online and offline services or commonly known as omnichannel. “What is clear, online and offline omnichannels must be integrated, not just exist but not connected. This omnichannel innovation is what we are doing at Lippo Group, so that it can offer good retail prospects in the future,” concluded John.