Watsons has been awarded "Digital Transformation Pioneer Company 2021" by WeChat, highlighting the brand’s efforts in delivering O+O (Offline plus Online) retail experience and digital transformation. Hu Renjie, Deputy General Manager of WeChat Open Platform, Tencent, complimented Watsons’ efforts on digital transformation, “WeChat has been working with Watsons closely over the years on eCommerce, and we are glad to see Watsons leading the industry by setting O+O as the new retail standard. With 60 million users on its mini programme, Watsons integrates its offline and online platforms and provides customers a seamless shopping experience. As one of the first companies to work with WeChat, Watsons has achieved brilliant results on WeChat mini programme and realised its smart retail concept.”
Over the past year, different industries has shifted their focus to eCommerce which has then been growing rapidly despite the COVID-19 pandemic. As the leading health and beauty retailer, Watsons started investing in digital transformation many years ago and now set O+O as the new standard for retail. In addition to bringing customers great shopping experience with its extensive physical store network, Watsons also interacts with its customers through online platforms, including WeChat mini programme, WeChat Enterprise Beauty Consultation, Watsons Beauty Community, WeChat service account, video account and WeChat groups, connecting offline and online platforms.
Watsons mini programme is at the core of the O+O retail model with almost 60 million users in Mainland China. Watsons beauty advisors closely connect with customers through WeChat Enterprise and provide one-on-one beauty consultations. Since launch, beauty advisors have added over 40 million customers as friends through WeChat Enterprise, and provide them with personalised promotions, birthday offers and membership event invitations to drive traffic to the Watsons mini programme and physical stores. Coupled with special offers and member benefits to enhance the customer experience, customer life cycle is effectively extended with better sales performance - data shows that members who follow Watsons’ WeChat Enterprise account spend 2.1 times more than that of the members who don’t do so.
As the number of Watsons’ customers continue to increase both offline and online, O+O sales has reached new heights, showing that Watsons O+O retail model has great potential and can effectively drive business growth. Looking ahead to 2022, Watsons will continue to focus on O+O retail model and lead the industry in digital transformation, which ultimately brings customers a better shopping experience.
