Showrooming or Web-rooming?

Physical retailers have been suffering at the hands of eCommere for years. The ability to browser and buy from the comfort of your own sofa (or bed) has been a growing and compelling proposition, especially compared to the madness of Christmas or sale times.

And now, thanks to in-store Internet connectivity and smartphones online shopping continues to grow at the expense of in-store retail. Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices (mobile phones, phablets and even tablets) in stores to: get product information, check competitive prices and obtain feedback from reviews & social media contacts. They are therefore using the in-store experience to 'showroom' by looking at, touching and even experiencing a range of products only to then convert online.

However this is only part of the story, as the reverse experience is also true. In a recent PWC survey, 70% of the respondents stated that they started the purchase process online, but converted in-store.

This process, now know as “web-rooming" is a growing trend that has benefited from the factors such as:

• a focus by retailers on an improved in-store experience 
• better staff training, to help customers purchase rather than put them off 
• better and immediate stock availability 

The graph below, taken from the report, outlines the specific reasons why the respondents prefer to buy products in-store instead of online:

Multi-channel retail meets Shopper Marketing

For many of us who come from the digital world, the mere existence of a whole area of retail analysis called Shopper Marketing is a bit a surprise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopper_marketing

And even those like me who are aware... but talk, write or generally think about multi-channel retailing, tend to focus on digital first and in-store second.

But if the statistic in that above Wikipedia article that '70% of brand selections are still made in stores' is to be believed... then online needs to get realistic about the influence it really has at the point of sale. Now I've no actual evidence to contradict this figure, but it does feel a rather high percentage... given that a lot of people will already have made their choice up about the brands they want before they get to the point of purchase.

Over the last few months I've built up my understanding of Shopper Marketing, having worked alongside an agency that specifically does that sort of thing. I actually have to admit I am actually quite impressed with some of the outputs of their work; producing empirical results from their in-store analysis which puts a lot of website testing to shame. For example, heat maps are carried out on different product aisles in various stores from a selection of viewer angles.

In short, digital user experience practitioners could learn a lot from the effort that goes into store planning (where to put products and how customers get to them).

So it does raise the important issue of how these two disciplines come together to:

• Understand the roles that in-store and online now have
• Map the Paths to Purchase (both Digital to Store and Store to Digital)
• Grow customer loyalty and retain existing customers

In short, multi-channel retail / eCommerce and shopper marketing now need to merge into a single area of specialisation... Multi-channel shopper marketing.

IRIS : Internet retailing in store

Congratulations to Internet Retailing Magazine and Expo for their introduction of the term IRIS which is short for Internet Retailing in-Store.
Not only is it a great term that is easy to remember, but the eye-based connotation is also clever and relevant.
http://www.internetretailingexpo.com/

These days the use of mobile devices to shop online has grown to become a major revenue channel for all but the most resistant of retailers. But as more and more people shop with their smartphone in stores, and use other connected devices when they are there, then the in-store Internet retailing experience is going to become of increasing importance.
Note: connected commerce happens anywhere you can get data, not just at home on the sofa via a fast broadband connection (as I'm sure a lot if ecommerce traders still believe).

The Government's High Street Review revealed that retail spending has fallen by 42% in town centres and is forecast to fall further to 40% by 2014. So one could therefore argue that the more recent developments in online retailing such as click & collect now need to connect the digital experience with the physical one. Not just to increase the revenue for online traders, but as a potential way of boosting the stores income too.