Multichannel Marketing in the Age of Showrooming and Webrooming

Multichannel marketing is more vital than ever before as consumer behavior evolves. A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article discussed the difficulty that traditional stores have in keeping up with minute-to-minute price changes from online competitors. Shoppers will be comparing prices online vs in-store, so retailers can't afford to neglect this competitive issue.

Nebraska Furniture Mart, for instance, replaced printed price tags with digital price displays so it can make a price change in all stores with one click. The retailer is known for beating competitors' prices, so digital pricing is a big help when shoppers apply showrooming and use smartphones to check prices while they browse the aisles in person. Carrefour and other chains use digital price tags as well, such as those provided by Pricer (sample shown above).

Multichannel Merchant magazine explains that webrooming is when a consumer researches a purchase online and then goes to a store to buy. This is an emerging trend shaping marketing. For instance, IKEA was successful in using Facebook ads to increase in-store traffic by attracting online browsers who then visited a local store.

Webrooming is increasingly popular among shoppers who don't want to pay for shipping, who want to touch/see a product before buying, and who want to be sure a product is in stock before going to the store.