Target and Best Buy have made it pretty clear they are fighting back against the phenomenon of showrooming, in which customers browse for television sets and other products in stores and then buy them online from Amazon and other etailers for less. Both companies recently made their seasonal practices of matching prices at online retailers a year-round policy.
A new study of Amazon customers who research products in stores by Placed, a mobile analytics company, offers some insight into who else could be at the greatest risk of losing business to showrooming. The study relies on Placed’s panl of more than 14,000 mobile phone users who consent to have their locations tracked in exchange for store gift cards and other perks. Placed can tell when those people visit a particular retailer without them having to proactively report their store visits.
Mobile phones are an indispensable tool of showroomers for comparing prices. Amazon has even given users of its mobile shopping app the ability to simplify price lookups on its site by letting them scan product bar codes using their smartphone cameras.
Among the people on its panel who reported buying items on Amazon after looking at the same item in physical stores, Placed found that Bed Bath and Beyond, PetSmart and Toys ‘R’ Us were the retailers that Amazon showroomers visited the most, with Amazon showroomers 27 percent, 25 percent and 21 percent more likely to visit the three stores, respectively, than the average consumer.
When Placed examined Amazon showroomers by gender, it found Best Buy, the Home Depot and Lowe’s! were the three retailers men were most likely to visit, while Kohl’s, PetSmart and Bed Bath and Beyond held the top spots for women.
Another interesting nugget in Placed’s study shows how much overlap there is between Amazon’s Prime customers, who get free two-day shipping and other benefits for an annual fee, and other membership-based retailers. People who told Placed that they were Amazon Prime customers were 45 percent more likely to visit Costco and 39 percent more likely to visit BJ’s Wholesale Club than the average shopper.
It’s possible that at some point those shoppers might choose to ditch their memberships at physical stores as Amazon offers more goods and delivery service that more directly compete with the instant gratification and selection of its offline competitors. For now, though, a lot of people seem to be choosing Amazon Prime without sacrificing other store memberships.
