Showrooming: a trend challenging the retail sector

Generally speaking, retailers see showrooming as a threat to their survival. While it's impossible to stop the rise of e-commerce, physical outlets need to deploy new strategies to invite consumers into their stores. Find out why showrooming is so successful, and what levers are available to help the retail sector hold its own against online competition.

What is showrooming?

Showrooming refers to the practice of consumers visiting a shop to discover a product, in order to validate their intention to buy. Directly on site, using their smartphone, they check the availability of the item on e-commerce sites or price comparison sites, to ensure that the offer they have in front of them is the most advantageous. Sales are then generally made online, rather than in-store. Physical stores thus become free, accessible showrooms. Showrooming has also seen the emergence of an opposite but related trend, webrooming or RoPo. This practice consists in consumers pre-scouting a product on the Internet, in order to obtain information about it, and then purchasing it in-store.

The main reasons for the rise of showrooming

Showrooming is a new stage in the customer journey, perceived as an additional difficulty by retail professionals. There are a variety of reasons why consumers choose to buy online:

• Out of stock in store;
• Too long a wait at the checkout;
• Prices sometimes better on the Internet

Lower online prices

The opportunity to pay less for a product than in-store is one of the main reasons consumers turn to online shopping. Promotions, flash offers and discounts for first-time orders or newsletter subscriptions are major advantages for e-tailers.

In-store stock-outs

The retail sector is suffering from the reign of immediacy: consumers in a hurry have no intention of waiting to buy. This means that companies have to put in place extensive logistics to meet this requirement (supply management and access to storage). E-tailers, on the other hand, don't have this problem. But if consumers can't find the product they want in-store, they'll turn to sites where stock is available.

Home delivery

Home delivery has marked the advent of e-commerce, all the more so when it's free and fast. This option doesn't encourage you to visit a store, however, if it doesn't promise a genuine experience that's worth the detour. This is because going to the store represents a time-consuming constraint (borrowing a means of transport, queuing to try on and/or pay for a purchase), which is not necessarily counterbalanced by the added value that justifies the trip.

Note: for its counterpart, webrooming, shipping costs and delivery times are the main obstacles to online purchasing.

The challenges facing physical stores

To keep up with the competition on the Internet, retail's main challenge is to reinvent the in-store customer experience: maintaining business requires special attention to the customer. For many companies, building a digital strategy responds to the need to offer a new experience and services to increasingly qualified and personalized customers. By multiplying contact points of contact with their customers via cross-channel, physical outlets multiply their chances of attracting them back to the store. In fact, physical stores have no shortage of assets on which to capitalize: delivery conditions are the main obstacle to online sales, as is service after-sales.

Providing an omnichannel experience

The major challenge for retail is to make the boundaries between stores and websites ever finer, as omnichannelity represents a major growth lever aimed at creating a better retail experience.

By multiplying the points of contact online, social networks and physical stores, prospects have a vast choice of purchasing channels, one of which is bound to find their favor. Deploying an marketing omnichannel strategy helps to drive in-store traffic, by attracting qualified prospects to stores through digital channels. This technique leads to a focus on a personalized and unique in-store customer experience, with the aim of transforming prospects into customers more easily, and thus increasing the conversion rate.

Need an example of a tool to deliver an omnichannel experience? Digitizing points of sale with digital signage is one of the most profitable strategies. It consists of positioning screens - tablets, totems and touch screens for catalog consultation or direct ordering - in key high-traffic areas. Retailers must be able to make the most of these innovations, to put physical points of sale back at the heart of the customer experience.

Offer more advanced in-store services

Physical stores need to develop advanced, exclusive and expert services, as well as in-store advantages, to convince their prospects to buy from them. The main objective is to give meaning to a visit to the store: it must be a real experience and offer added value, whether it leads to a purchase or not. The first key to success is to provide a tailor-made service and expertise : it's absolutely essential that our teams are as informed as our customers. As consumers become increasingly connected, they need to be able to interact with an equally knowledgeable salesperson, so that they can trust his or her opinion.

Last but not least, an e-commerce site provides ultra-personalized browsing for customers: thanks to their purchase history and their discovery path, they are presented with products that correspond to their expectations. The customer's path to purchase is thus perfectly signposted; an in-store sales assistant must be able to demonstrate a high level of listening skills in order to offer a comparable service .

Strengthen customer commitment

Another way to help businesses cope with the influx of online sales is to develop customer commitment via a loyalty strategy. This can be based on a policy of rewards (promotions, exclusive additional services, etc.) for customers who visit the store. This is where QR codes come into play, creating a link between the physical store and the online store: by giving access to promotions and discounts, they encourage consumers to visit the store. Stores can also take advantage of their use of smartphones in situ to encourage them to share their opinions live, or to collect their contact details by subscribing to a newsletter.

It's by cultivating a close connection with your customers that you can create a sense of attachment to your brand. In the case of new consumers, the use of marketing online campaigns is essential; they need to be addressed in an appropriate way via the channels they are most likely to consult, such as social networks.

Digital signage for connected points of sale

To combat declining customer numbers, physical stores have a number of tools at their disposal to adapt and imagine new concepts of experience. Digitizing sales areas is one of the most effective and profitable solutions for generating qualified in-store traffic and boosting sales. Acting as a bridge between the physical point of sale and the digital world, digital signage is a powerful tool for delivering an innovative experience. Cenareo and its dedicated digital signage management system facilitate interaction, and add a vast surface of expression for broadcasting impactful content. Digital signage is a very powerful means of communication, and can be deployed easily and tailored to your objectives. Flexible and intuitive, the Cenareo solution makes this innovative communication channel a field of experimentation with high ROI, to adapt to the digitalization needs of sales outlets.

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If you're looking for ways to generate qualified traffic and offer your customers a unique experience, Cenareo can help you deploy your marketing strategy, thanks to our dedicated digital signage system. Create, plan and distribute high-impact content on your screens to meet tomorrow's trends and your customers' expectations.