ITC Limited has launched an online store locator to find offline stores that sell its FMCG products across different categories, reports Times of India. The report states that the company has mapped more than 20 lakh stores across the country including organised retail and kirana outlets with near real-time information on the availability of its products on the online platform. Apparently, the company is planning to link the inventory billing of its products from these outlets so that buyers can check the availability of a product before visiting a store. The report also states that the store locator has recorded more than 29,000 visits since its soft launch in May 2013 and plans to market the locator through point-of-sale counters and information on product packaging. When we checked the website, we noticed that users can enter the name of the city, pincode/area and the name of the product to search for the availability of the product in the stores in that area. Products can be searched by brands or categories. The website offers store locators for its FMCG products including food products, stationery, personal care, lifestyle brands like Wills Lifestyle and John Players. The website has integrated a map for its lifestyle brands since the number of retail stores would be much lesser than the stores that retail its other products. The company has a mobile optimized version of the website too, but it should have either launched the locator on a separate domain or a smaller sub-domain since users may find…
