Brands Need to Stop Managing Each Channel as a Standalone
As discovery starts to converge with answer engines, the old challenge of creating a unified shopping experience between channels will intensify. With AI and machine learning, “the customer may simply explain what they are looking for, and let the system narrow it down,” explains Andros Tiong, Regional Director, DTC - Retail & Omni Channel SEA at ASICS Corporation.
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Customers do not experience a brand through separate online and offline channels. They move between social platforms, marketplaces, websites, messaging channels and physical stores as part of the same shopping journey.
A customer might discover a product on social media, compare prices and reviews on a mobile device, visit a store to try it, and later complete the purchase online.
- For the customer, these are connected interactions.
- For many organisations, however, they are still managed as separate channels.
This gap is becoming harder to ignore as shopping journeys become less linear and technology starts to influence how products are discovered and evaluated.
AI could further change that process, allowing customers to narrow down options and make decisions without necessarily following the traditional path from search to website to purchase.
According to Andros Tiong, Regional Director, DTC – Retail & Omni Channel SEA at ASICS Corporation, “The challenge is not simply connecting the dots from online and offline.” It ensures that product availability, pricing structure, promotional campaigns, and customer information are consistent, allowing customers to move seamlessly between channels without knowing which operational parameters are behind them.
At ASICS, a global sports company, the customer experience spans both physical and digital touchpoints. Headquartered in Kobe, Japan, ASICS operates in more than 30 countries and offers products across performance sports, as well as its SportStyle range, Onitsuka Tiger brand, Runkeeper app, and OneASICS membership programme.
For Andros, the challenge extends beyond technology itself. Retailers also need to consider how data, processes, teams and functions come together to support a more connected customer experience, while recognising that the role of physical stores can remain important in categories where customers want to touch, try and experience a product before making a decision.
In this interview, Andros discusses why Southeast Asian markets need room for local adaptation and how retailers can use technology without losing the human connection that remains central to the experience.
Full interview;
Customers don’t think in terms of “online” and “offline” anymore. They might discover something on social media, visit a store, compare prices on their phone and buy later. What do you think brands still misunderstand about this kind of shopping journey?
The customer sees a total shopping experience for a brand as one journey, but some organisations still classify it as a different channel engagement.
A customer may see a product on social media, check the reviews and prices on their mobile phone, visit a store to try it, and later purchase online either on their brand site or marketplace.
To the customer, that’s one shopping journey.
From my experience in omnichannel, the challenge is not simply connecting the dots from online and offline.
It is making sure that product availability, price structure, promotional campaigns, and customer information are consistent, which allows them to move seamlessly between different channels without knowing what operational parameters are behind it.
I think brands need to stop managing each channel as a standalone platform, but ask ourselves,
- What journey did our customer take and feel before making a purchase decision?
- How do you see shopping behaviours across channels changing, and how will machine interfaces further evolve discovery and purchase decisions?
I think shopping will slowly become less linear.
Today, we already see customers moving between social, marketplaces, brand websites, stores and messaging platforms. The next change is that customers may not always actively search for a product themselves.
With AI and machine learning, instead of searching through 20 products, the customer may simply explain what they are looking for and let the system narrow it down.
The question for us is, how can we make AI recommend the brand? What needs to win?
Having said that, I don’t think physical retail stores will disappear.
In categories like functional footwear, customers still want to touch, try and feel the product. So I see technology becoming more important in discovery and decision making, while physical stores can remain as very important touch point experiences to decide and gain the consumer confidence to purchase.
There is a lot of excitement around AI helping retailers understand customers and personalise experiences. Where do you see AI genuinely improving the shopping experience, and where could it simply add another layer of technology?
I do see the genuine value when AI removes friction or helps us make a better decision.
For example, better summarise product recommendations, demand forecasting, inventory availability, customer service and understanding customer intent.
However, we need to be very careful to understand what kind of customer our product is unique to. If I put another chatbot in front of a customer who purchases a product which needs physical touch experiences, but the customer still can’t find the right product through data explainable answers, doesn’t know whether the intention of making this purchase, etc., then I haven’t really improved the experience.
From my experience, technology should solve a customer or business requirement first, while AI serves as an invisible enabler in the backend.
I would therefore measure AI by whether it improves something meaningful in the backend, identifies gaps within conversion, flexibility towards inventory management availability, and customer retention.
Not simply by how many AI features we have launched, which our customers actually do not need to physically “feel”.
Southeast Asia isn’t one uniform retail market. Consumer behaviour and digital maturity can look very different from Singapore to Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam. How should brands balance regional scale with local customer expectations?
Consumer behaviour can be better evaluated if Southeast Asia can be managed as one single market. There are common regional opportunities, but customer behaviour, digital maturity, marketplaces, payment behaviour and even the role of physical stores can be very different from Singapore to Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam.
At the regional level, we can standardise things where scale gives us an advantage—technology, data infrastructure, brand standards, CRM principles, supply chain and certain operating processes.
But customer acquisition, assortment, promotions, marketplaces and the actual customer journey need enough flexibility for each market to adapt.
My experience is that trying to force every market into exactly the same model can actually reduce performance. Having the scale for each market should provide more capabilities, but not take away their ability to respond locally.
If you look at the next few years of retail, what is one thing brands are currently overestimating and one thing they may be seriously underestimating?
Overestimating: I think brands are overestimating how fast technology alone can transform our retail experience.
There is a lot of excitement around AI, automation and personalisation, but implementing the technology is actually the easier part.
The harder part is changing the internal processes, organisational behaviour, management decisions to make a change, data ownership, changes of current team member roles and responsibilities, and how a company can collaborate again on individual functions, and a new scope of work.
Underestimating: I believe some brands are overly relying on the idea that AI can replace a human connection of trust and emotional intelligence, especially in physical retail.
AI can make discovery faster and more personalised, but when the customer is making an important purchase, sometimes what they need is still a knowledgeable person who understands their needs.
Someone who can listen and respond, using body and facial expressions when a person speaks. Human connections continue to play a strong part towards how individual behaviours and how we react and respond.
So I don’t think the future of Retail is human vs AI. But it’s AI making human interaction more meaningful.
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