Last Friday I presented a short talk at the Designing for Mobility 2013 conference, held in Melbourne. The talk - Showrooming: threat and opportunity - looked at the emerging pattern of shoppers using physical retail outlets as a showroom, and subsequently price-comparing and purchasing online.
Whilst showrooming is seen primarily as a threat to traditional retail spaces, the reality is that the traffic into a store continues to represent an opportunity for increased loyalty, brand awareness, impulse buying and more. Instead of focusing on mitigating the threat (by price-matching, for example), retailers could focus on a more integrated online/offline customer experience and crafting a more engaging in-store interaction.
The audio and slides will be up in a few weeks. I'll update this post when they're ready.