A recent study from Placed looked at the retailers most at-risk of showrooming behavior. But which retailers are most likely to benefit from showrooming? While conventional thinking would place Amazon at the top of the list, a new study from ClickIQ suggests that “retailers are providing showrooms for each other.” The study looked at the actions of consumers who had used their mobile device while in-store to research a product, and have since purchased the product.
ClickIQ defines showrooming to be the act of “going to a brick and mortar store only to purchase the item somewhere else (usually online) because they found a better item and/or price at another retailer.” The study results indicate that online-only retailers such as Amazon aren’t the only beneficiaries of this type of behavior. For example, among those who researched a product while at Best Buy, twice as many ended up purchasing the item at Target (20%) as did at Amazon (10%), while another 10% bought it at Walmart. Similarly, of those who researched at Target, 14% bought at Walmart, versus 13% at Amazon and 7% at Best Buy. (It’s possible that there are other factors at play here – as the study does not specify the length of time between in-store research and eventual purchase.)
The study does show that most of the in-store shoppers ended up buying at the retailer where they were shopping, and only few used a retailer’s online site. Among the 24% of respondents who ended up buying online, a slight majority said they did not pay sales tax, with 65% of those saying that had some influence on their purchase decision.
About the Data: Data was collected in an online survey from 1000 of ClickIQ’s U.S. consumer panel from January 30 to February 7, 2013. Target respondents must have shopped in a retail store within the past 3 months, own a mobile device and used the mobile device while at a brick & mortar store to research a product, and have since purchased the researched product. The survey results have margin of error of +/-5% at a 95% confidence level.
