The Main Advantages and Disadvantages of Bricks and Clicks Businesses

Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Bricks and Clicks? Also what is a hybrid store?

Answer

A bricks and clicks store is a term for a business model by which an organisation integrates both offline (bricks) and online (clicks) presences. Furthermore, many will also offer telephone ordering and mobile phone apps to complement their services. The most popular example of the bricks and clicks model is when a chain of stores allows the consumer to purchase products either online or physically in one of their stores.

Advantages – Consumers tend to have a lot more trust and confidence in buying products from a particular brand, using click-and-bricks methods, if they already have a presence on the high street. By conducting business activities solely online would mean that the customer has a limited way in physically seeing and testing their products. Another major benefit of trading both online and offline would benefit greatly in being convenient for the customer, as they can access and purchase products 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Additionally, a customer also has the opportunity to return items to a brick and mortar, so the business has potential to save on wasted costs on shipping for undelivered and returned items.

Disadvantages – The main disadvantage would be the set up and running costs for maintaining a physical presence and their staffing for each store, along with keeping up with trends online and updating webpages etc., which can usually incur significant costs to the business.

Hybrid store – Essentially, a hybrid business is a traditional firm that combines an internet front-end with its brick and mortar back-ends, with examples including warehouses and order fulfilment services. An example of a brand that operates in this way is Argos.