Showrooming refers to the growing trend by consumers to use stores as a space for mere observation of products that they later buy through the web.
According to Forrester estimates, showrooming will affect 44% of sales in stores at street level. On the other hand, Deloitte Digital believes that showrooming influenced purchases worth 159 billion dollars in American stores during 2012, or what is the same, 5% of the total and this figure will grow to 689 billion. in 2015.
In this trend, smartphones play a fundamental role since they allow the consumer, from the same store, to search for better prices for the same items as well as similar items. Traditional stores therefore have an enormous challenge in front of them to capture the attention of their users and offer a differential service that can compete with showrooming.
In this sense, the interaction with brands at the point of sale is enormously sophisticated, the barrier between what is real and what is digital vanishes, making the experience at the point of sale also become part of the “digital world”. Brands have a huge challenge, and also an opportunity, in knowing how to capture the user’s attention, seduce him and show him the advantages and benefits of their products compared to the competition, as well as recommend similar products at the same point of sale.
QR codes, NFC technology and mobile applications play a decisive role in this new shopping experience. Through a mobile application, a brand can provide detailed information on its products, recommend similar or complementary products, send you news, notify you of promotions or take you, thanks to geolocation, to the nearest point of sale. Mobile applications allow brands and stores to fight against showrooming.