Google taps the retail sector with first store in New York

On Thursday, Google said it would start a permanent retail store in New York this summer, similar to Apple’s retail stores that brought in record-setting revenue of $64 billion in 2020, a 28% increase from 2019.
The Google retail store will operate from the Chelsea neighborhood near its New York City campus. It has more than 11000 employees. The company has been working in New York for 20 years; thus, it plans to explore the opportunities in the retail space.
The company has informed that it would sell Pixelbook laptops, Fitbit fitness trackers, and Pixel smartphones in addition to the Nest smart home devices at the retail outlet.
Retail outlets offer convenience to the customers to get service from authorized service providers. Hence, the retail store by Google will help customers benefit from technical support to fix hardware and software issues like installation, troubleshooting problems, or setting a cracked Pixel screen and picking up the online orders from the store. Moreover, the company will also host workshops to guide customers on using Google devices. The customers can browse the products and experience how the products work in immersive ways.
The new venture explains that the tech giant is following some of the strategies of Apple since Apple has boosted sales in the outlets.
Until 2018, Apple has expanded the physical stores in25 countries with 506 stores. The first two stores were in Virginia in 2001. This strategy of venturing into the retail sector drove sales along with building customer relations through in-person service.
The internet giant closed the annual Google I/O keynote event recently. The CEO Sundar Pichai and his staff announced the new product developments that include Android 12 and new Wear OS. Additionally, the company also mentioned the new language model called LaMDA that offers natural language understanding. Other announcements were safer routing in Google Maps and a superior video conferencing initiative called Project Starline.
However, some companies felt that the physical stores are not relevant to the present situation due to the pandemic. Therefore, Microsoft announced to permanently close all of its retail stores last year except in NYC, London, Sydney, and Redmond. The company will remodel the open stores into experience centers.
The significance of retail stores is high as the customers learn about the products they want to buy. Therefore, the new store will help the customers to experience the company’s products. However, the store will follow all the necessary safety guidelines to have a safe shopping experience. The customers and staff will require to wear masks, maintain social distancing and use hand sanitizers; apart from this, the store will be cleaned and sanitized multiple times a day.