{"id":1673426,"date":"2014-06-10T11:34:42","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T18:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/10\/retail-customer-trends-point-toward-webrooming-research\/"},"modified":"2014-06-10T11:34:42","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T18:34:42","slug":"retail-customer-trends-point-toward-webrooming-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/10\/retail-customer-trends-point-toward-webrooming-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Retail customer trends point toward Webrooming, research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Consumers may make impulse purchases on a regular basis, but when it comes to desiring a specific item, they&#39;re likely to conduct research on the product, as well as the merchandisers that offer it for sale. The latest retail customer trends point toward a need&nbsp;for information, and&nbsp;shoppers are&nbsp;they&#39;re willing to obtain it from wherever they can find it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Looking for convenience <\/strong><br \/>\nAccording to Business News Daily, more people are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessnewsdaily.com\/6565-webrooming-retail-stores.html\" target=\"_blank\">beginning to research goods online<\/a> and visit brick-and-mortar stores to purchase them, a process known as Webrooming. The source referenced a survey conducted by Merchant Warehouse, which discovered that nearly 75 percent of respondents said they engage in Webrooming because they don&#39;t want to pay for shipping or wait for delivery. Over one-third (37 percent) of study participants claimed they enjoyed the option of returning the item in-store, rather than having to ship it back.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Searching for opinions, the experience <\/strong><br \/>\nBusiness News Daily acknowledged the&nbsp;consumer desire for a more intimate shopping experience. Sure, they can read product reviews and look at interactive 3D displays of&nbsp;items they&#39;re researching, but having a conversation with a sales representative or fellow customer in-store can convey so much more information. For example, a person looking for a laptop may look up different brands online and then go to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\/WhyRetailPro.php\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">specialty retail<\/a> store offering a particular model to seek expert advice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Placing confidence in the order <\/strong><br \/>\nAt times, the inability to physically interact with goods can be a deal-breaker. There are some consumers who simply can&#39;t be assuaged by a collection of rave reviews posted on a website or detailed product description posted directly below the picture. Roopa Unnikrishnan, a contributor to Quartz, noted that <a href=\"http:\/\/qz.com\/217962\/brick-and-mortar-retailers-need-to-make-customers-feel-theyre-walking-into-a-website\/\" target=\"_blank\">68 percent of online carts are abandoned<\/a>, with 25 percent of customers saying they did so because navigating the website was too complicated.<\/p>\n<p>Essentially, purchasing items from a brick-and-mortar store is much more simple. Unnikrishnan wrote that these centers offer solace to those who don&#39;t feel like perusing a website for&nbsp;half an hour looking for a specific product. Yet, she recognized the importance of differentiating one store from another. Specialty retailers &#8211; such as the hypothetical tech boutique mentioned in the third paragraph &#8211; can capitalize on such a strategy by bringing their own specific look and feel to the atmosphere. Taking time to visit an outlet is seen as a social experience, so taking the time to make it unique can work to a shop&#39;s advantage.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest retail customer trends point toward a desire for information, and shoppers are\u00a0willing to obtain it from wherever they can find it. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/10\/retail-customer-trends-point-toward-webrooming-research\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1673427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-specialty-retail-industry-trends"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1673427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}