Newswise — With the surge in smartphones, online shopping has exploded, leaving brick-and-mortar retailers contemplating their next move?
New research by University of Alabama Professor Dan Bachrach shows that the explosion of online shopping and smartphones doesn’t spell doom for brick-and-mortar stores. Bachrach’s research reveals that blending online with brick-and-mortar is the way to attract today’s shoppers who desire a seamless consistency between online and physical stores. In essence, retailers should provide an experience that combines in-store with an easy-to-navigate, online website that is mobile friendly; then create ways to creatively engage the customer using both.
“Because customers’ experiences can easily and harmoniously flow from in-store experiences to online purchases (often called showrooming), and also from online research to in-store purchases (reverse showrooming), financial incentives to purchase from another business dissolve. However it can spell lost sales if the customer experience flow is disrupted when loyalty programs issue points that are redeemable only on in-store purchases,” says Bachrach.
Bachrach is available to talk with media and share his research and new book, More than A Showroom, Strategies for Winning Back Online Shoppers. Bachrach’s book on Amazon, Transformative Selling, has frequently been purchased along with Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human on Amazon.
Bachrach is a professor in management at the Culverhouse College of Commerce.
More about Dan Bachrach www.culverhouse.ua.edu/faculty/profile/139
RSS