Jenny Peng

e-Commerce Taking Over: Showrooms and Their Disappearing Visitors

As technology rapidly evolving, consumer’s life is changing in various aspects. Shops not only have to change their promotion strategy, they should also take a look into their product and distribution strategies. More and more consumers choose to shop on-line and the physically existing showrooms are loosing their consumers.

Popular internet shopping mall such as Amazon, Zappos, and eBay are gaining their popularity and rapidly taking over the market. A study shows 82% of of British consumers, 79% of Danish and Sweden consumers, and 77% of German consumers shop online regularly. The growing online shopping population is not only seen in EU, around 35% of Chinese consumers, 55% of Japanese consumers, and 60% of Korean consumers shop online regularly. This trend shows the opportunities for online stores but also the treat to the physically existing showrooms. The increase in online purchases has a negative relationship with in store purchases. The increase in e-Commerce result in decrease in sale in stores and leaving the costly showrooms less revenue generating. Internet these days provides an overall, informative, and cheap way to research which leads the consumers away from showrooms and stores. Statistics shows that 81% of consumers do their research online.

Technology innovations are generated by ideas, and ideas could be used to improve showroom performance too. Target’s new model of showroom plus online shopping provides a new showroom experience. It connected showroom with online shopping website to enrich the research experience while letting the consumers to enjoy the ease of shopping online. Even though this is just an experiment, the idea of driving the online shopping consumers back to the store through wi-fi coverage in store and in-store pick-up may actually improve showrooms’ performances.