Is showrooming keeping retailers up at night?

Customers find something they like in a shop, and buy it from someone else at a better price, using mobile or web channels

Retail is a continuously evolving industry more so in today’s globally integrated world and, as in the case of several other industries, the last decade has witnessed tremendous changes in retailing as well.  The industry has moved from the days of retailers/shops being in control of what to display and what to offer, to today’s scenario in which the customer is in complete control, and is largely responsible for the emergence of the concept of ‘showrooming’. As it turns out, ‘showrooming’ is greatly bothering many traditional retailers.

In simple terms, showrooming is this whole trend in which the consumer treats retail shops as showrooms and uses either the web or mobile channels to purchase the same product for a better price.

The empowered consumer is challenging the entire supply-chain process and the very foundation of traditional retailing. While showrooming seems to be prevalent for specific merchandise such as electronic goods and books, this whole phenomenon has woken up traditional retailers to re-haul and be responsive to prevent further erosion of their customer bases and focus on initiatives to increase wallet share per customer. While some have introduced price match, exclusive-products-available-in-store-only and value-added services, there is more to do.

The retailers who are able to respond to the changing consumer behavior, and who focus on improving their knowledge of the customer base and set up initiatives to enhance the consumer experience (irrespective of the channels) are the one’s who continue to stand out and grow in this socially-networked, globally-integrated world. The strategy is to give each consumer a view that everything is personalised, thus creating a social buzz and brand value that the retailer is sensitive to address the needs at an individual level, instead of the one size fits all approach.

Among the technological advancements, a combination of insight-based commerce solutions and business analytics practices make sense of the data to facilitate in decision making for retailers, both from a broad view to understand the demographics and buying patterns at a community level, all the way to specific merchandise needs at an individual consumer level. These technological solutions turn customer insight into action, enabling new business processes that help companies buy, market, sell and service their products and services. This along with the focus on mobility, supported by other technological solutions like cloud offerings, are helping to create a seamless omni-channel experience, thus enabling global retailers to tackle the impacts of “showrooming” and meet the needs of the ‘empowered consumer’.

The author is Industry Leader – Retail, IBM Global Business Delivery/Global Delivery