Where does showrooming collide?

Shoppers who inspect a product in a physical store, using its displays and its staff, and then buy the same item online, often at a lower price. Rapp, Baker, Bachrach, Ogilvie, and Beitelspacher's 2015 study in the Journal of Retailing named this the customer showrooming behavior that store salespeople perceive, and traced how it erodes a salesperson's confidence and sales. The referent is one concrete act, the store-then-web purchase, viewed from the shop floor. The other names on this map cover the reverse direction, the wider family of channel switching, and the case where the online purchase goes to a rival, but all four describe the same underlying habit of splitting research and buying across channels.[1]

Unit

One shopper's store-inspection-then-online-purchase episode

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Salesperson-reported perceptions of showrooming, and survey or transaction records of store visits followed by online buying

The mirror image of showrooming: shoppers research a product online, reading specifications and reviews, and then complete the purchase in a physical store where they can touch the item and take it home at once. Flavián, Gurrea, and Orús's 2016 paper in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour studied this webrooming purchase process and how online reviews and the wish to handle a product build a buyer's confidence. The referent is the same split of research and buying across channels as showrooming, only the directions are swapped. It is also called reverse showrooming, which underlines that the field treats these as two faces of one behavior rather than two behaviors.[2]

Unit

One shopper's online-research-then-in-store-purchase episode

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Surveys and experiments on stated channel choice, purchase confidence, and the motivation to touch a product before buying

The general pattern of gathering information in one channel and then buying in another, whichever way round. Verhoef, Neslin, and Vroomen's 2007 paper in the International Journal of Research in Marketing named this the research-shopper phenomenon and explained it through attribute-based advantages of each channel, lock-in, and cross-channel synergy. This is the parent framing: showrooming and webrooming are its two directional cases, and competitive showrooming is a further slice of it. Where the retail and consumer studies each fix one direction and one setting, this tradition treats the direction as a variable and asks why a shopper researches in the channel that is good for looking and buys in the channel that is good for buying.[3]

Unit

One shopper's channel pairing for the search stage and the purchase stage

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Cross-channel survey panels and choice models estimating the probability of searching in one channel and purchasing in another

The costly variant of showrooming in which the shopper inspects a product at one retailer and then buys it online from a different retailer, so the store that provided the service loses the sale entirely. Gensler, Neslin, and Verhoef's 2017 paper in the Journal of Interactive Marketing named competitive showrooming and showed it is driven by more than price, including the ease of comparing on a mobile device and low perceived service quality in the store. The referent is the same store-then-web act named on the first ring, narrowed to the case where the online seller is a rival. It is a subtype, not a separate behavior: the split of research and buying is identical, and only who captures the purchase has changed.[4]

Unit

One shopper's store-inspection followed by purchase from a rival online seller

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Surveys and field data distinguishing purchases from the same retailer online (loyal) from purchases at a competitor (competitive)