With a tough holiday season being forecast, retailers are knocking down the walls between their bricks-and-mortar operations and online businesses, a move analysts said is crucial more than ever.
“One of the things we’ve seen over time and expect to see increase is the influence online is having on offline purchases,” said Patti Freeman Evans, senior retail analyst at Manhattan-based Jupiter Research.
“Currently, 82 percent of shoppers research their purchases online. And retailers are seeing customers walking around with printouts from the Web site or a coupon from the Web site. They [retailers] are trying to facilitate what consumers are already doing themselves,” she said.
In the last two years, a wide range of retailers have been attempting to transform the two operations into a seamless whole, retail experts said.
Certain retailers now allow shoppers to return items bought online in the stores and retailers have made an effort to make shipping policies more transparent, reports newstoday.com
Customers can buy online and pick up their purchase in the store — an option that has expanded beyond the large electronics outfits to retailers like Wal-Mart and even Coach, noted Evans.
About 96 percent of products advertised in a retailer’s circular are available online, according to a study of online retailing conducted by Forrester Research Inc., an independent technology and market research company.
The study said 55 percent of retailers surveyed said they had a unified product database, and 43 percent of retailers said their staff can place online orders from the store.
And retailers provide online customers with the option of picking up their purchase at a store noted an added benefit, the study noted.
“Once these cross-channel customers come to a store to pick up an online order, 26 percent of them make additional purchases,” the study said.
A slow housing market, high energy prices and Wall Street’s subprime mortgage crisis have been cited as contributing to consumers’ worries about the economy and a reason many will be tightening their budgets, retail experts said.
Convenience, ease and trust in the retailer are reasons shoppers purchase online, they said. But some say the budget pressure is also having an effect driving consumers online looking for bargains.
