Consumers love shopping online, but they haven’t completely abandoned brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, they’ve incorporated in-store experiences into their overall shopping experience. Fifty-six percent of respondents in one study reported that they look at a product at a store before buying it online later.
This strategy is known as “showrooming”, and it can be a good thing. If a customer interacts with the product and decides to purchase it off your store’s website later, that’s fine. It’s a delayed win. But then there’s also the possibility that someone checks out the product in-store only to buy it from another store’s website. Since brick-and-mortar stores have overhead to think about, their prices will be higher than many online alternatives.
Retailers have two options.
They can either reject showrooming and put measures in place to prevent it, or they can embrace showrooming as a strategy for building brand loyalty and encouraging purchases. As you can imagine, the latter is the way to go.
What You Shouldn’t Do About Showrooming
Some retailers have taken a defensive approach to showrooming. One store owner in Australia put up a sign telling customers that everyone would be charged a $5 “browsing fee”. People who made a purchase would have this fee deducted off their balance.
All this does is make existing customers resentful and potential customers uncomfortable. Showrooming isn’t going away anytime soon. In truth, it’s a welcome opportunity for store owners to win customers in person instead of trying to woo them from behind a computer screen.
Why Showroomers Deserve Special Attention From Retailers
While showroomers sound like pesky browsers to shoo away, they’re actually a special breed of consumer.
Showroomers actively engage with brands and are primed to be enthusiastic brand advocates. One IBM study found that 58 percent of showroomers visit online communities multiple times a day and more than half write a positive review. In other words, these are consumers who spend a significant amount of time learning about products and reviewing them.
Additionally, they’re more likely to share an outstanding in-store experience. Displays, demos, and interactive events are the sorts of the things that will draw consumers away from e-commerce platforms and into stores. If you create an experience worth sharing, these are the consumers who will gladly share it.
Strategies for Making The Most of Showrooming
Create a digital experience. Embrace showrooming in its entirely. Turn your store into a place where consumers want to hang out and learn about your product. This is the approach Marks & Spencer took when they equipped their stores with high resolution televisions, free WIFI, and virtual counters.
Develop unique products. You can’t be undercut if no one else is selling the same thing. While a retailer’s ability to do this ultimately depends on the kind of business they run, those that can have a chance to offer something completely different from the competition and also reinforce their brand.
Set up an online sister store. You know the saying: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Build an online store. This doesn’t mean you should tear down your brick-and-mortar operation. Rather, you create an omnichannel shopping experience that offers a seamless online/offline experience. Give customers the option of browsing your store inventory, purchase online, pick-up and return in-store – essentially breaking down the boundaries between the online and offline channels. This ensures customers buy from you whether it’s at a till or a computer.
Offer store delivery. On the flip side, there’s a phenomenon called webrooming. Consumers check out a product online and then make the purchase in store. Offer in-store delivery (i.e. products shipped for free to the store for pick-up instead of for a fee to the customer’s house) to take advantage of webrooming to offset showrooming.
Offer in-store discounts. This one is obvious. If you want to get people to your store, offer discounts that are only available in person. While you’ll never be able to offer the across-the-board discounts online retailers can, you can strategically promote certain products with exclusive in-store offers.
Blocking the WIFI or charging customers to browse are not sustainable strategies. All that will do is alienate customers. Instead, embrace change and find ways to use shifts in consumer behaviour to your advantage.
