The emergence of E-commerce has profoundly influenced customers’ shopping habits in behaviors. While online shopping has plenty of benefits for the customer, it has also become potentially detrimental to offline retail stores, causing a phenomenon called showrooming. According to Greene (2012), showrooming is defined as a practice in which consumers visit a store to inspect a physical product and then opt to buy it online, often at a lower price. Although the prevalence of showrooming could potentially put real-life businesses on the verge of extinction, there are specific strategies to retain customers and revenue.
Showrooming poses a threat to physical retailers as it drains the store’s resources without offering any financial interest. The owner of a conventional store should relocate their funds to pay for the maintenance of a physical location, including bills, rent, and staff (Greene, 2012). Moreover, repeated examination of physical products can damage the goods and result in financial loss. Essentially, when a customer browses a store to examine the merchandise and then purchases the intended product online, the online store grows at the expense of the resources of the brick-and-mortar shop.
One way to combat the effects of showrooming is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer. Employing new technologies across multiple channels to identify the target audience and customer’s individual needs is essential to achieve a smoother purchase journey. If all the data about prospective and current clients are gathered into a single data set, the analysis of such a holistic overview could give the physical stores an edge over their online rivals (“The issue of showrooming,” 2015). Using the so-called single customer view, the data gathered from multiple sources, can be helpful in many departments, such as marketing, product design, and sales, to better target the appropriate segments. As a result, this information can be used to create a better engagement campaign with the customer.
The approach mentioned above can be advanced by improving the customer experience by making it easy and seamless. Bridging the gap between offline and online should be central to the development of a customer-centric approach. For instance, retailers could implement a store pick-up strategy, in which a customer purchases products online but is then able to pick up their order at the physical location. A carefully crafted product layout could then persuade the customer to buy additional goods. Alternatively, a shop could introduce a bonus system where a customer gets credit for purchasing online.
The key to addressing the negative consequences of showrooming is ensuring the happiness of the customer. Conventional stores can introduce new technologies, such as in-store tablets, that allow for comparing similar products by providing reviews and information on product availability (“The issue of showrooming,” 2015). Training staff to provide the customer with a better experience could also help conventional retailers retain customers by establishing a personal, customer-centric connection with a client.
The phenomenon of showrooming is inevitable because it is driven by the desire to gain the best possible deal and save money. There are ways to battle showrooming and convert browsers into buyers. Conventional real-life retail stores should utilize various technological channels (for example, smartphones) to gain a better understanding of their customers. If the data is used to its full extent, a brick-and-mortar store could effectively provide the customer with a persuading experience and, as a result, retain customers and stay in business.
References
Greene, B. (2012). Will ‘showrooming’ kill businesses? CNN.
The issue of showrooming – Bridging the gap in retail. (2015). Experian.