What Is Hyperlocal Marketplace Model And How Does It Works?
Delivery business is no more the same post Covid 19. Customers ever growing expectations are guiding delivery business in to new services and delivery processes. To retain customers and stay in business, delivery companies are struck with the challenge of reducing the delivery time window. It all started with next day delivery to same day delivery to express deliveries and now Hyperlocal marketplace and deliveries. This model has gained hype in the last year. Due to pandemic, many new habits have been adopted including online retail & grocery shopping, healthy lifestyle behaviors, advancing healthcare systems, and most importantly hyperlocal deliveries model.
There’s a lot of buzz about this model and the delivery companies and startups are competing to gain the market share as quickly as possible. This model provides customers with the convenience to order essential items from a close by store within a time window of 1-2 hours. This model is of extra importance as, it has opened the doors of opportunities for small neighborhood shops.
Let’s take a deep dive into Hyperlocal marketplace and deliveries.
What are Hyperlocal marketplaces? And why this model is in demand!
Hyperlocal marketplace introduces the concept of delivering the local products from the neighborhood stores with in a short time window (1-2 hours). Local vendors list their businesses and reach the customer to expand their business through a Multivendor Marketplace. The idea of a hyper-local marketplaces popped up because of the growth of “find near me” searches.
The concept of a hyperlocal marketplace is nothing new. It’s just that this concept has gained huge popularity during the height of pandemic and lockdowns. Due to limited movement and restrictions to visiting public places, people are bound to stay at home. Which is why. opting in for online shopping and fast deliveries makes more sense to everyone. At the start of the Covid-19, local stores were not prepared to meet the demands of delivery orders.
As a result, old system failed terribly, when people couldn’t receive grocery or food items on time. To deal with this crisis, a concept was introduced that caters to the need of a limited geographical area with in few hours. And thus, Hyperlocal marketplaces were born. The USP of hyperlocal model lies in their ability to deliver products or services at the fastest speed possible.
Efficiency and convenience is what that hyperlocal delivery models promise to their customers. Services may include ordering groceries, food, pharma from the store. Or, requesting a ride, or at home maintenance services. Hyperlocal marketplace helps business expand their reach especially after facing close downs during covid-19 crisis. It’s a wise decision for better growth and an efficient business progression.
How does this work?
As already mentioned, hyperlocal marketplaces cater to the limited geographic region mostly with in the range of 5 to 10km. Hence, taking goods and services from the offline stores within a few kilometers range, to the customers, through an App. Let’s suppose you were preparing dinner and were short of a few ingredients. Instead of leaving the house or canceling the dinner plan, simply log in to your local marketplace app, select desired store and select the products you need.
Place the order and viola its done. A mobile application works wonders for such types of Business models, where accuracy of address and online payments are involved. For Hyperlocal marketplace and deliveries, not speed of delivery is the key
Why did this model pop up during COVID-19?
Past year and so, everyone was at their home. That is when the conventional model totally collapsed and the old brick and mortar stores were out of customers. Under such circumstances, the only option left for the businesses was to shift their offline stores to online. This huge change needed an efficient delivery model for its success. To help, delivery companies jumped in, got their Apps published and took local stores online.
The time when the covid-19 outbreak caused a major panic around the globe staying in business and serving customers was the major concern. That is when Hyperlocal deliveries model came as a life saver.
Read More: Multivendor Marketplace Software
The model of hyperlocal deliveries got popularity majorly due to the pandemic. Now, the question arises, when Covid-19 will end would this model collapse?
And the answer is No! definitely not.
We have already entered into the era of behavioral change. Expectations have set and the solutions have been provided and it will be only up and up from here. The day by day Technology evolution and innovation is making life easier and attention spans are reducing.
So for such a lifestyle change, the hyper-local marketplace and delivery model would be the best way forward. Whether it is grocery, wellness products, pharmaceutical needs, COVID Testing at home, vaccine service at home or any other service, such or any other instant service model would stay relevant.