Webrooming: the web as the main source of information for purchases
RetailTune combines physical and digital to create value for consumers and brands
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According to the latest data from the Multichannel Observatory released by Politecnico di Milano (October 2020), 79% of Italians consider the web the main source of information when purchasing products or services (up from 64% in 2007). 52% of respondents (12,000 Italians aged 14 and over) say they search for information online and buy offline — in other words, they practice “webrooming”. However, the opposite phenomenon is also happening, known as showrooming: 41% of respondents say they research in-store in order to buy online.
The pandemic has therefore made consumers even more fluid, and today, more than ever, shopping no longer means being in a store, flipping through a flyer, or checking offers on the store’s app — it means doing all of these things together, sometimes even at the same time. As a result, digital is increasingly used at every stage of the purchase process: from researching information to comparing prices, all the way to reviewing products and post-sales support.
We are therefore witnessing significant changes in the interaction between brands and consumers, changes that can give rise to a virtuous relationship. According to an international study conducted by Google in collaboration with Euromonitor in June 2020, 73% of respondents say they are channel-agnostic. The main theme to emerge is that consumers expect an increasingly seamless experience, regardless of the channel on which the transaction is ultimately completed.
Thanks to innovation, technological tools and local communication, brands can focus on building a relationship with their customers by leveraging the channels users are used to interacting with before going to the store.
RetailTune’s offering
RetailTune, the Italian company leading in local digital marketing and drive to store, has turned this challenge into an opportunity, offering services capable of reaching consumers to establish a dialogue between the store and the end customer. The result comes from the creation and use of an intelligent technology that geolocates the customer when they view a product on the brand’s website. The tool detects the user’s position and shows in real time the nearest stores, along with information such as opening hours and active promotions.
Claudio Agazzi, CEO of RetailTune
Stores thus have a new channel of dialogue with the consumer: a dedicated page on the brand’s website with direct access to all customer care and support services. These include: Reserve in Store and Back in Store, which let the consumer interact with the technology as if they were in the store. On one hand, this solution raises the level of customer service and increases store visibility; on the other, it can collect a range of useful data, from monitoring the organic drive-to-store campaigns delivered by the platform to detecting local preferences. Not only that: there is also an analytics tool that provides meaningful figures on the drive-to-store phenomenon in-store.
Initial data from the fashion sector collected by RetailTune shows that consumers not only use the web to research before buying offline, but also use it as a communication and service channel. An interesting example from the fashion sector, gathered internally by RetailTune, shows that across 130 stores worldwide, over 30 days between February and March, there were 2,000 store locator actions, 1,600 requests for directions, 350 calls to the store, and 250 WhatsApp chat requests. Not only that: there were also 250 requests to reserve items in store and 66 back-in-store requests. All of this translates into store visits and, above all, purchases.
In an era of change, some have managed to create a new dialogue between the customer and the store, leveraging its interactions and services. RetailTune’s mission is to bring together the physical and the digital to offer added value to the consumer and an advantage to the store.
The watchword is acceleration: a push to speed up all the processes that let the brand evolve the role of physical space by offering new exclusives, new services, and a new way of talking to the end customer. In this sense, booking services, payments finalized via chat or messaging, in-store reservation systems, and detailed analysis of local audience preferences per store are just a few examples.
Companies therefore need to start again from one basic awareness: that the store is not just a physical entity but also a digital one, and it is in both worlds that they must act, engaging the consumer, giving them information and one more reason to buy, where, when and how they want.
“We have therefore managed to give a more tangible value to webrooming”, explains Claudio Agazzi, Founder of RetailTune. “We can track the data and figures behind the fusion of online and offline. What’s surprising is how the results of this analysis are actually similar to, or the same as, the webrooming percentages that have always circulated on speakers’ stages. Today, anyone who buys in a store does some webrooming in 40, 50, 60% of cases; well, we now have that correct figure for every brand, and above all we have the first benchmarks for every sector, which can help companies make the adjustments needed to improve performance. The goal is always the same. The customer buys wherever they want, and we — RetailTune and the brand — put them in a position to do so”.