Showrooming is the word that describes consumers who use their smartphone, while they are in a store, to search the web for the product they are interested in and, often times, buying from an online retailer or another nearby store at a better price. If you’re a retailer, you naturally think this is a problem.
This chart from an article on eMarketer.com shows how quickly showrooming has grown in the last few years and now most retailers believe that this is a way of life and they have to adjust to meet this challenge, they just don’t know what to do.
In the article they reference a study from Deloitte,
Deloitte also found that the in-store conversion rate for shoppers who used a retailer’s own app or site was 20% higher than for those who used an app belonging to another business, such as an aggregator like shopkick.
That is the answer. A retailer today needs a great site and a mobile version of that site to close consumers who are in their store and online. Unfortunately, if you’re a brand manager responsible for retail advertising, you don’t have enough budget, time or talent to build sites for all of your retailers let alone a mobile version, too.
However, you do have enough money, time and talent to add a mobile microsite output option to your digital asset management system and/or ad builder. Once you make this option available to your retailers they can customize your great content with their local spin and deliver an in-store mobile presentation that blocks their competitors and helps close the sale. Because our system also hosts the mobile landing page you can track, learn and adjust to every situation, in near real time. Retailers will make it a part of their current site and, if not, Google will still find a way to present it in mobile search results.
Here’s how they end the article,
Retailers that use showrooming behaviors to their own advantage reason that mobile consumers are a fact of life now. Failing to cater to them will only create more challenges down the line.
We agree!