Retail stores have suffered from “showrooming,” a process by which customers browse products in stores, but then return to online retailers to purchase their items.
Some retailers have attempted to combat the problem by replacing bar codes with company-only bar codes that cannot be scanned and compared online.
Other retailers are transforming “their stores into extensions of their own online operations” by ” stepping up efforts to add Web return centers, pickup locations, free shipping outlets, payment booths and even drive-through customer service centers for online sales to their brick-and-mortar buildings,” reports The New York Times.
“We are living in the age of the customer, and you can either fight these trends that are happening — showrooming is one — or you can embrace them,” explains Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com for the United States. “We have a lot of assets, but they’re only assets if you embrace the trends of the customers.”
Retailers who offer pick up locations for online purchases find that it attracts different types of customers than traditional online shopping. Whereas traditional online shoppers often pay with credit cards, shoppers who order online and then pick up their order in the store often pay with cash, either to avoid identity theft or because they do not have credit cards.
Vice president of stores for the Container Store John Thrailkill notes that “the online orders for in-store pickup also tended to be much larger than typical in-store purchases, and that customers who picked up orders in the store visited about 50 percent more often than customers who shopped only in the stores.”
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