I am back from celebrating Durga Puja in Kolkata – now billed as the world’s largest global public art festival. What’s a girl to do when she sighs that she has nothing appropriate to wear? She of course buys a traditional Bengali sari on Blinkit for Rs 600 ($10), gets it home delivered in 10 minutes and teams it with a red t-shirt.
Was the sari good?
It was good enough. Quick commerce is about being quick – everything else is just an added bonus. So much so that the next day, after finding out that the mall only stocked Dyson hair dryers (!!!) the teen suggested that I look on Blinkit for a curler. And voila! we got a really nice one from an unheard of brand.
Ok, yes, I hear you – this is terribly bad for the environment. But unless the government steps into regulate, this model is here to stay with a whole generation believing in instant fulfillment.
Make it easy for me
This has been the driver of progress for humankind. Consumers would like to get what they want with minimum friction. And once the 10 minute genie has been experienced, it’s hard to wait even 100 minutes for the same thing! At the moment it is still a novelty, but within 5 years we will have adults emerging who have never had to plan in advance or go without something because they forgot to plan for it.
Is your marketing ready for 24×7 AND 3 minute commerce?
In Singapore the “famous” brick and mortar department store Mustafa’s recently decided to stay open 24×7. It sells groceries but also electronics, clothes, toys, watches, perfumes etc. Why would people want to buy this in the middle of the night? Because they can!
If there is an economically viable way to satisfy a craving instantly, customers will take it! Oh, and if you haven’t heard, the marshmallow experiment has been debunked.
The way we consume will change so much! If I can restock whenever I run out, I might buy smaller pack sizes of anything from edible oil to shampoo. I might experiment with a daily recipe subscription which asks for exotic ingredients. I can stop buying printers and just ask for the occasional printout. Maybe frequently purchased items like coffee or sugar can come in reusable containers. If I can trust food delivery, I might shut my kitchen. Maybe physical books can be viable again, as circulating libraries embrace quick commerce. I may not plan ahead for a birthday party, just expect that I can whip it together at 10 minutes notice.
But I also like slow commerce
The day after I traipsed around in my heavily starched Blinkit sari (it was actually a brand called Minu), I went to my friend Sudeshna’s boutique, Prakruti, with my whole family. Here we sipped freshly brewed tea, ate samosas and ladoos, and admired the beautiful collection of hand-crafted clothes. She remembered that the teen loved waffles and had ordered for some to be delivered. We tried on multiple outfits, received fashion advice and spent over an hour enjoying ourselves. This shopping served a very different emotional need from the Blinkit experience.
Similarly, my love of home delivery food doesn’t mean I won’t go to a restaurant if it delivers a significantly different experience. One of my most memorable meals was actually during the COVID restrictions phase. We were in The Netherlands at the time and the Michelin starred De Librije restaurant delivered a meal, course by course, with live streamed prep, to your room in their hotel. What typically would have been a very formal dinner only for adults in their dining room, became accessible to our teen and dog.
The Middle is Awkward
I predict that there will be instant delivery at one end and slow commerce at the other, with use cases for both. The middle will shrink, and be restricted to products that are considerably cheaper because they are a little bit slower to deliver or where the quality is substantially better for a little bit of a wait. The middle will be pinched as innovation will be around making things “good enough” for quick commerce.
The Moral Note
Quick commerce does open a pandora’s box of mindless and heedless consumption. The heedlessness to the environment or the exploitation of the humans in the supply chain is something that governments have to regulate. Market forces by themselves will not take care of that. You only have to see the pronouncements of business barons like Elon Musk or Bhavish Aggarwal to know that they are not capable of self-regulation. Which brings me to the mindlessness – as constraints like location or time are removed from consumption, our ability to self-regulate will become super important.
