Boomerooming for majority of consumers
Internet firm RedSnapper performed a research to compare boomerooming to webrooming and showrooming studies. A Merchant Warehouse study had shown that 69 % of 18 to 36 year old smartphone users have done webrooming while only 50 % have done showrooming. That should have been good news for retailers, but RedSnapper questioned the results.
The company wanted to see whether British consumers were actually boomerooming instead of webrooming, and it turns out that 67 % of women have done so, like 58 % of men. 40 to 59 year old people are the ones who boomeroom the most.
Combination of advantages
The most important reason to also visit the shop is the lack of physical contact with the product online. Being able to touch, see or feel the product is important and quite hard to do online. Half of the people involved in the survey gave this as the biggest disadvantage of online shopping.
It seems that a considerable part of the consumer base has managed to combine the advantages of online shopping (choice, search options and lower prices) with the shopping experience and advantages of physical stores. That is bad news for ‘pure players’, both online and offline and further proof that the future (and even the present) is an omni-channel one.
