Online shop­ping, with it’s adapt­able pric­ing, fre­quent pro­mo­tions, and abil­i­ty to com­pare retail offer­ings quick­ly and con­ve­nient­ly, offers con­sumers a lev­el of ser­vice and reas­sur­ance that in-store retail­ers often strug­gle to match. New research from Dis­play­da­ta indi­cates that in-store shopp­ping still has a role to play in con­sumer jour­neys, and the intro­duc­tion of Elec­tron­ic Ser­vice Labels (ESLs) may offer retail­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ties to inte­grate and improve in-store con­sumer shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

Research con­duct­ed by Diplay­da­ta sur­vey­ing 2,000 U.S. and UK con­sumers, has revealed a grow­ing trend in which con­sumers are “show­room­ing,” or brows­ing goods in-store before going online to com­pare prices and make a pur­chase. Thir­ty-two per­cent of the con­sumers sur­veyed said they engaged in show­room­ing in-store, using their mobile devices to check-out prices in store.

Oth­er stud­ies mea­sured the show­room­ing fig­ure to be clos­er to 40 per­cent, ris­ing to an even greater 84 per­cent accord­ing to one Deloitte study when con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of shop­pers who use their smart­phones for research before head­ing into a store.

Dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences are exert­ing ever greater influ­ence on con­sumer pur­chase jour­neys. The study esti­mates that an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty, 97 per­cent, of con­sumers are now reg­u­lar­ly shop­ping online, hav­ing become accus­tomed to the val­ue and con­ve­nience that online shop­ping offers.

It’s easy to see why. Online retail ben­e­fits from the abil­i­ty to change pric­ing based on sup­ply, demand, or sea­son­al pro­mo­tions, and so often is able to offer con­sumers bet­ter val­ue. Accord­ing to the report, Ama­zon, for exam­ple, makes 2.5 mil­lion price changes each day, while Wal­mart and Best Buy make around 50,000 price changes per month.

Con­sumers have come to trust in the val­ue of online goods. The report reveals that 42 per­cent of U.S. shop­pers still believe in-store retail­ers offer dif­fer­ent prices online than they do in-store, and 72 per­cent have been dis­cour­aged from pur­chas­ing goods in-store because they were con­cerned the price was not good val­ue.

Where Does In-Store Retail Fit In?

Despite this, there is still a strong case to make for in-store retail with­in con­sumer jour­neys. Dis­play­data’s sur­vey found that 83 per­cent of U.S. con­sumers and 78 per­cent of UK con­sumers still make a large num­ber of their pur­chas­es in-store.

In cer­tain sec­tors, such as gro­cery, health and beau­ty, home­ware, and DIY, the major­i­ty of con­sumer spend­ing still takes place in a retail store, accord­ing to Dis­play­da­ta:

Why are retail stores still so impor­tant to shop­pers? Because con­sumers val­ue:

• See­ing, touch­ing, and try­ing goods.
• Tak­ing advan­tage of in-store pro­mo­tions.
• Ask­ing ques­tions eas­i­ly.

In par­tic­u­lar, the abil­i­ty to see and expe­ri­ence items was con­sid­ered by 75 per­cent of U.S. shop­pers, and 80 per­cent of UK shop­pers, to be the most impor­tant rea­son for vis­it­ing a store.

Why Integrate In-Store Retail Experiences With Online?

While some stores have intro­duced inno­v­a­tive strate­gies to link up online/offline con­sumer jour­neys, with a num­ber of ecom­merce retail­ers offer­ing Click-and-Col­lect ser­vices to dri­ve traf­fic in-store, there remains a dis­con­nect between the expec­ta­tions con­sumers have of brands as a result of the val­ue and con­ve­nience they expe­ri­ence while shop­ping online, and that they receive in-store.

For exam­ple, 58 per­cent of shop­pers are buy­ing more goods on pro­mo­tion than at the start of 2012 when shop­ping for gro­ceries, an incen­tive that has become com­mon­place, if not the stan­dard, for dig­i­tal retail. If retail­ers want to con­nect up con­sumer jour­neys and reduce the drop-off from show­room­ing, they will need to intro­duce sys­tems able to cater to con­sumer’s high expec­ta­tions of con­ve­nience and val­ue.

Introducing Electronic Shelf Labels

Dis­play­data’s report also espous­es the poten­tial impact of Elec­tron­ic Shelf Labels (ESLs), which gives retail­ers the abil­i­ty to adapt pric­ing and offer pro­mo­tions to the effect online retail­ers have been able to offer con­sumers for years.

It’s a pow­er­ful propo­si­tion and one could bring real val­ue to in-store retail oper­a­tions. Accord­ing to Patrick Con­nol­ly, senior ana­lyst at ABI Research:

“[Elec­tron­ic shelf labels] will give retail­ers far more con­trol and flex­i­bil­i­ty, with the abil­i­ty to reward loy­al cus­tomers, dynam­i­cal­ly match pric­ing to vary­ing demand, while also meet­ing the needs of price sen­si­tive cus­tomers.”

Retail­ers need to rethink in-store expe­ri­ences and view them as con­sumers do. As a ver­sa­tile resource that sits with­in an inter­twin­ing, omnichan­nel jour­ney, able to pro­vide a seam­less user expe­ri­ences with the rest of a con­sumers dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions. If they can bridge this gap between dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal shop­ping, then the dis­tinc­tion between online and offline brand offer­ings will work togeth­er, serv­ing con­sumers in a man­ner inde­pen­dent of chan­nels, but cater­ing instead to the over­all cohe­sion of the user expe­ri­ence.