The rise of Quick Commerce?

 

Imagine watching a thrilling football game. At a crucial moment, you reach for your snack drawer, only to discover that you’re out of your favourite chips. You could run to the store, but then you’d miss the game. Or order online and have the snacks delivered in 1 to 10 business days.

 

But what if there was a way to get the snacks within the hour, or even in a few minutes? Well, that’s exactly what the developers of Quick Commerce had in mind.

 

 

What is Quick Commerce

As the name suggests, Quick Commerce, or Q-Commerce, is a type of e-Commerce that promises extremely quick delivery times. Similarly to traditional food delivery, Q-Commerce vendors can usually send the desired products within an hour or even less.

 

| Q-Commerce is a type of e-Commerce that promises extremely quick delivery times

 

On the consumer’s end, it works just like ordering via regular e-Commerce platforms or takeout from restaurants. You open your specific QC app and order from their array of products, then wait for delivery.

 

Read all about Lieferando’s food delivery scandal in Germany!

 

For businesses, however, QC couldn’t look more different than e-Commerce, and even than traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

 

Typically, e-Commerce operations use medium to large warehouses, usually located outside of cities. This wouldn’t work for QC, since the dimensions and locations of these warehouses don’t allow for quick deliveries.

 

Therefore, Q-Commerce businesses operate several so-called dark stores placed within densely populated urban areas. These stores house a large variety of products organised strategically so that it’s easy to grab products and go as soon as an order comes in. In this respect, dark stores are similar to actual physical stores, with the exception that no consumers are allowed in them, and the flow of products is not designed to get shoppers to buy as much as possible.

 

| Q-Commerce businesses operate dark stores placed within densely populated urban areas

 

Another difference is that e-Commerce operators have time to group deliveries to cut costs. For QC, there’s no time for it, which means that carriers (who usually work on bikes or scooters) often only deliver one single order before returning to base.

 

These conditions require Q-Commerce apps to be perfectly synchronised with the stock of dark stores. Robust and flexible IT solutions are needed for ordering, stock keeping and synchronising everything within seconds.

 

| Robust IT solutions are needed for ordering, stock keeping and synchronising everything within seconds

 

Since space at dark stores is limited, vendors have to anticipate future demands accurately. So, staying with our earlier example of a football game, vendors must keep an eye on events that may generate demand for a specific product type and stock it a little in advance. Not a lot in advance, though, because that would rob precious space from products needed for an earlier demand.

 

And let’s not forget about the issue of lightning-fast delivery. Q-Commerce operators require a lot of readily available riders who take the goods from the dark store to the customer right away, which is definitely costly. This is going to remain an issue until a less cost-intensive delivery method, e.g. delivery by drones, becomes more widely adopted.

 

Unfortunately, as we observed during COVID, some companies exploit their riders and compel them to work under questionable conditions for low wages. However, due to the increasing demand for humane working conditions and fair pay, such actions would undoubtedly damage the reputation of any brand.

 

 

Illustration of a Q-Commerce order on a laptop and depiction of a delivery vehicle carrying out this order under time pressure

 

 

Q-Commerce in numbers

Quick Commerce rose to fame during COVID times, when lockdowns forced people to stay at home as much as possible. In 2025, the market is projected to reach a value of $195.01 billion worldwide.

 

Despite the promising numbers, QC is not equally popular around the world. In fact, China, the US, India, Japan and South Korea are the markets where Q-Commerce is most popular, which means that these markets contribute the heaviest to QC’s worldwide user penetration of 8.6%. (In comparison, e-Commerce has a user penetration of 42.4%.)

 

Thanks to an annual growth rate of 8.05%, QC is projected to reach a market value of $265.84 billion and a user penetration of 11% by 2029.

 

| QC is projected to reach a market value of $265.84 billion by 2029

 

It seems that the growth of Q-Commerce is inhibited by its very nature. The requirement to deliver goods in under an hour sets a limit on the supply of products and the size of the area served. This all means that it’s not economically viable for QC operators to set up shop outside of densely populated areas, as the demand arising out of smaller communities may not make it worth their while. No wonder that Quick Commerce is most popular in countries possessing large metropolitan areas.

 

However, Q-Commerce is present in other countries as well. In Germany, for example, 21 million inhabitants in over 40 cities have access to some form of QC. That corresponds to roughly a quarter of the entire population, which shows that Q-Commerce has a clear potential in Europe as well.

 

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Protecting your IP rights in Quick Commerce

Whether or not you should give Q-Commerce a try depends on the nature of your products and the capacities of your brands. As we’ve seen, products that generate an immediate demand, e.g. groceries, household items, and fresh food may be more popular in Quick Commerce than others that consumers can wait a few days for.

 

Similarly, stocking products temporarily in high demand, like grill ingredients before summer weekends, is also essential for QC operators, but it requires you to constantly keep your finger on the market’s pulse and possess robust IT solutions that don’t crash when hundreds of people discover they’re out of ketchup right before lunchtime.

 

 

Image of a warehouse manager checking stock levels on her laptop

 

 

You may decide that QC doesn’t make sense for your brand. However, that doesn’t mean that others won’t try to sell your products - even without your consent.

 

Due to the hyper-local nature of Q-Commerce, checking for IP infringements yourself is next to impossible. It’s hard even with large e-Commerce operators like Amazon and eBay, but to manually run through all the local catalogues of every single QC app is simply not viable for brands.

 

| Due to the hyper-local nature of Q-Commerce, checking for IP infringements yourself is next to impossible

 

Luckily, online brand protection has you covered, even in Quick Commerce.

 

Thanks to our network of local researchers, globaleyez can provide perfectly scalable services from a pinpointed, hyper-local to a much wider global focus. Our services are based on powerful software and intuitive human expertise, which means that with us, you’ll get the best of both worlds.

 

Our marketplace monitoring service is perfect for detecting unauthorised product listings on over 150 marketplaces worldwide. We can monitor all kinds of platforms, from giant global ones like Amazon to tiny local marketplaces serving their immediate neighbourhoods.

 

We often combine this service with image monitoring because fraudsters tend to use stolen or copied pictures to enhance their listings and/or draw in customers with fake ads.

 

Should we need to learn more about the identity of a seller or the origins of a product, we recommend a test purchase. This service provides you with court-admissible evidence about the fraudsters’ activities and is vital to following their trail.

 

Finally, enforcing your rights by organising the removal of the infringing product listing (or picture, ad, etc) from circulation is the last step to ensure the safety of your IP rights.

 

 

Conclusion

Quick Commerce is an exciting segment of e-Commerce. Thanks to its convenience and rapid reaction times, Q-Commerce enjoys a slow but steady growth that could be beneficial for your brand. However, even if you decide that QC is not for you, fraudsters may think otherwise.

 

Don’t let them infringe on your rights and steal your revenue! Contact us and let’s set up a comprehensive online brand protection programme to ensure the safety of your IP rights.