A couple of items today reinforce how shopping behavior is increasingly integrated on- and off-line. Warby Parker co-founder Dave Gilboa explains why he considers retail stores so important, even though they account for less than 10% of sales, in this interview with Gigaom.
“The future of our business and all retail is going to have some mix of online and offline. The economics make a lot more sense to do as much online as possible but we are that seeing customers who are coming into the showroom and interacting with us initially in the offline world, when they buy again their second, third, fourth glasses, they’re doing so directly through the web site,” Gilboa said.
Michael Carney in Pando Daily argues that bricks and mortar retailers need a strategy to win shoppers who arm themselves with mobile phones while they shop in-store.
“Ideally, retailers would flip the script on their e-commerce brethren, not only agreeing to price match or discount against the catalogs of Amazon and others – an admittedly dangerous game – but also allowing users to immediately locate items within a store using their GPS enabled device. Also, stores should generously reward consumers for installing their apps (if they even have one), checking into their physical locations, and sharing items and promotions on social networks. The idea is to have consumers associate shopping in store with the convenience, serendipity, and connectedness common to online commerce.”
