What is showrooming and why is important?

Brick and mortar stores are facing increasing competition from online stores. One of the biggest challenges: customers are testing or trying on the merchandise in store and buying it online, cheaper. With increasing pressure from ecommerce, traditional retailers need to know what is showrooming and how they can benefit from it.

What is Showrooming?

showroomingSimply put Showrooming is the practice of checking merchandise in store and purchasing it online, usually cheaper. Although the practice has been around ever since online stores became competitive in terms of prices, things started moving a faster and faster. In 2020, the trend became even more prevalent, with store closures and more effective ecommerce stores. Customers can go to the closest store, try the product they want to purchase and then research prices online.

That’s obviously frustrating for store owners. They setup the shop, pay invoices for rent, pay checks only to find customers passing through the store, checking out the merchandise and then buying it elsewhere. Shoppers, on the other hand, don’t really care if the store makes any money or not. They want to try the product (check!) and then purchase it at the lowest price (check!).

When it comes to it, companies such as Amazon, Net-A-Porter or eBay, mostly online operations, are of course benefiting and even encouraging the trend. On the other hand traditionally offline retailers frown upon, helplessly,  and look for ways to counteract Showrooming.

There is great reason to do so as 69% shoppers look online for better prices and 47% look for free shipping, when checking products in-store.

Showrooming stats
Showrooming stats

There are ways for brick and mortar retailers to fight these trends at least in the short run, by:

  • offering to price match their online competitors
  • increase customer retention by creating loyalty programs
  • develop online operations to increase market reach and decrease product costs, therefore harnessing the Showrooming trend

If you’re a classic retailer you should note that these are only temporary solutions because…

Showrooming will eventually turn stores into showrooms

On the long run physical stores, in their current format, will probably become obsolete. Here’s a few things that might lead to that:

  • newer consumers value experiences and much more than they value the goods and the prices;
  • the store assistant job will change bringing in more of a store-to online format, with the rise of live commerce and live shopping;
  • stores will transform their function from sales to display-and-engage, driving brand awareness and loyalty;
  • online stores will open physical presences and will start leveraging their assets, like more effective use of technology and supply chains;
  • consumerism will be replaced by a hybrid form of community driven commerce, where goods are re-wearable, sustainable and help local economies.

There will be no “brick and mortar”-only retailers

The Boyer, Hensinger & Kleppinger General store, now a part of history.
The Boyer, Hensinger & Kleppinger General store, now a part of history.

Retailers tend to focus on the practice of showrooming, but there’s a larger picture of a rapidly changing reality. It’s not this practice they should be focusing on but rather the changing landscape of multichannel shopping. There is nothing mystic about online retail’s rise: it’s just that customers get more products for less money.

Expensive operations as brick and mortar stores, hardly manageable teams that usually harm retailers’ brands and many, many other overheads all add up to a tectonic shift in traditional commerce. Brick and mortar only retailers are a thing of the past. They can ignore the trends, they can fight them but sooner or later they too will be transformed, just like the traditional media juggernaut.

Ecommerce cuts out the middle men

As far as historical records go, commerce has been a traditionally multi-level industry. There were those that produced the goods, the big buyers, the carriers, the retailers, the marketers, all adding up to the costs. When globalisation came into effect that became even more so.

Say you wanted to develop and sell a computer. You had those handling raw materials, processing them, the assembly line, the shipping company, transport, distributers, retailers. Not to mention everyone in R&D, accounting and all those other XXI century white collar jobs. Just a glance shows a very, very long line between development and actually delivering the product to its end user.

All along this line, everyone adds costs. In the end the one that pays for these costs is the consumer.

No some companies thought they can do more with customers paying less and such was the case when Dell decided they will be shipping their customized products to those ordering online, when Apple decided they will just go ahead and open their own Flagship store and also let users purchase online, when Amazon built a bridge between writers and book-buyers – they were all just cutting out the middle man.

Startups are slashing through middle men

Outstanding design and materials to Warby Parker eyewear
Outstanding design and materials to Warby Parker eyewear

You think that’s just a timely thing? Here’s a list of startups that are slashing merciless through middle men with the power of ecommerce:

  1. Founders of Warby Parker showed they can slash prices on premium eyewear by cutting out designers, brands, wholesalers and retailers. From just 1% online buy rate for glasses they now expect the industry to deliver almost 15% in the next year. They managed to do that by letting customers receive home 5 pairs, for 5 days, so people can try them on, ask their friends what they think about them and than return 4 back without any charge.
  2. Seasonal collections? Screw that, Crane & Canopy releases new high quality duvets each week based on Pinterest and social media trends. They do that by connecting premium factories to end buyers. They cut out the wholesalers, retailers and premium designers.
  3. Similarly, Bonobos started when Stanford B-School students Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn decided they want to start a new business, met with a taylor and figured they can make affordable fitted clothing for men. Soon enough they were raising $16.5 million in venture capital and the business really took off.
Bonobos founders Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn
Bonobos founders Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn

These are rather small startups but if you remember no more than 30 years ago – there was no Apple. 15 years ago – there was no Amazon.  10 years ago we had no Facebook. Personal computing and music, books, communication and media – all industries that had been radically and irreversibly been changed by these rather young companies, driven by the amazing change the Internet is.

We now know retail is changing. With it – our whole society. The outcome is hard to predict but the signs are here. Small and mundane as it might seem, showrooming is one of those signs.

Do Consumers Like Waiting for Online Purchases to Arrive?

Maybe drones are not such a great idea
Maybe drones are not such a great idea

Could waiting for online orders to arrive actually be a pleasant experience? What about all those next day delivery and in-store pick-up features retailers brag about? What is the point in that?

Apparently not only is it pleasant but it may sometimes be more fun than buying products in store. The anticipation of orders arriving at our doors keep us on our toes. As a recent Razorfish report mentions, 76% of American consumers and 72% of UK consumers are more excited when their order is delivered at home than when they buy it in store.

Let’s stop for a moment and really look at these numbers: 3 out of 4 customers in the US, UK, Brazil and China would rather wait for purchases than receiving them right away.

This are amazing findings. It shows that instant gratification may no longer be the optimum trigger in marketing messages. It also means that what we thought was a liability for online sales is actually an asset, if used properly.

Building anticipation and delivering items on time is making customers happier than receiving it right away.

The distinction between online and offline is already irrelevant thanks to the smartphone

The smartphone is increasingly important in omnichannel retail. Source.
The smartphone is increasingly important in omnichannel retail. Source.

But don’t think that customers have lost their interest for offline OR online purchases. The channels have started blending with the help of smartphones. The same study reveals that:

1. Digital has a major impact on the retailer’s brand: Almost all those interviewed responded that a bad web store negatively impacts their opinion on the brand. 84% of consumers in Brazil, 92% in China, 73% in US and 79% in the UK are turned off by lousy digital experiences.

2. Customer journeys are not delivering what the customer wants: a cross-channel experience that works. Retailers are not yet delivering on the omnichannel promise. This leads to frustration and a growing gap between what the consumer wants and what the retailer delivers.

3. There is a huge difference between Gen Xers and Millennials, in terms of shopping. That difference lies in how much they rely on their smartphones. Millennials use their phones at least twice as much as Gen Xers when shopping offline (see figure above).

 

Showrooming Markets

Showrooming is a trend more and more retailers recognize. Most online retailers piggyback on consumers trying on merchandise in physical stores, only to search for the best price and then purchase the product online.

Although hard to fight, the trend might be actually beneficial for larger retailers that need to attract customers to their online stores and can afford price matching.

On one hand we have large retailers fighting to keep customers purchasing. Walmart for example, rolled out Savings Catcher in 2014 and now its pushing it across US. The tool allows users to compare prices on Walmart.com to those of its comepetitors. Any difference found is stored as store credit for the customer.

The likes of Amazon are trying to allow showroomers even more space to find the best prices online. Its recently launched Fire Phone has a built in mechanism that allows users to scan products (not just barcodes) and find the best deals online.

Showrooming around the world
Showrooming around the world

In this battle the ones that suffer most are the small retailers or retailers unadapted to omnichannel operations. This companies cannot afford customers trying on merchandise only to buy it some place else, while still keeping the shop open. It’s not just a passing thing either. 33% of customers worldwide report being showroomers, with 21% using their mobile phones to do it ( Source ).

Even more, markets that are earlier adopters of this trend seem to be even more into it. 71% of shoppers in developed Asia, 60% in North America and 54% of European consumers report showrooming practices.

As probably small to medium retailers won’t just roll over and disappear a new type of partner will probably appear in the near future

Showrooming markets as outsourced product display

Traditionally, retailers evolved to outsource everything that didn’t make sense handling within the company. Things as manufacturing or logistics are now commonly outsourced to reliable partners, companies that handle more than one retailers.

It’s not just manufacturing or logistics. If you think about it, most retailers outsource vital areas of their operations. Financial reporting, IT services and sometimes even human resources are outsourced to partners providing reliable service and economies of scale. Globalization has helped push this trend as companies can find cheaper, reliable work offshore.

But so far stores were pretty much left untouched. Retailers still feel the need to control and manage stores as they see fit, even if sometimes it is not the most economically reliable thing to do. As showrooming decreases the need and efficiency for the self-managed store, as online retail becomes increasingly popular and outsourcing gains traction in the future product display in store will also be outsourced.

[Article extracted from “Understanding Omnichannel Retail”. Download the report here.]

Millennials as well as older demographics still favor B&M stores. They also like to see and touch the products they are buying. But they don’t always buy from the shop displaying the product. There is a solution that will probably become commonplace in the future, especially for small and medium retailers.

As retailers need to optimize their pricing in order to compete to only pure plays and online retailers need to establish a physical presence, a new type of company will emerge. The showrooming market.

The showrooming market is a place that aims to provide customers with extended information on the product, as well as the full product experience. The concept is already available online, with markets such as Ebay providing product display space for smaller retailers, as well as online pure plays willing to try an additional sales channel.

The primary function for the showrooming market is product display, rather than sale. Its revenue sources would be retailers paying and competing for shelf space, but generally paying less than they would displaying the products  on their on. Retailers, on the other hand, would benefit from an affordable B&M space, as well as a logistic point in product delivery, outsourced to companies that can do it better, due to economies of scale and process optimization.