Why Many Shoppers Go To Stores Before Buying Online

The shopper journey continues to evolve as the path to purchase increasingly crosses between physical and digital worlds — and as consumers today bounce between stores, desktops and mobile devices, retailers are working to devise seamless omni-channel experiences to best serve these changing behaviors. In the first installment of the Retail Dive Consumer Survey, we determined that the ability to see, touch and feel products ranks highest among the reasons consumers choose to shop in stores versus online. For our latest and fourth installment, we explore the connection between digital and physical browsing and buying habits, asking 1,248 consumers how often they visit brick-and-mortar stores to see, touch and feel products before ordering them online. The notion of “see in store, buy online” has been confirmed. More than half of surveyed consumers said they visit a store — at least occasionally — to see, touch and feel products before ordering them online. Even though shoppers have so many paths to purchase these days, many still want to “kick the tires” before buying. This suggests that there’s some room for improvement across e-commerce sites, including the way items are displayed, product descriptions and even customer service interaction. Advances in 3-D imaging and virtual reality could be possible game changers down the line, however, attracting more shoppers to buy online without seeing products first-hand in a physical store. Visiting stores to see items before buying them online tends to correlate with age, too. The older the shopper, the more likely they are to visit stores first to see products. A much higher percentage of younger shoppers are more comfortable buying items online sight unseen. Read more at Retail Dive.