Case study: Can retailers win back shoppers who browse then buy online?

I can think of a few things that you just need to see or feel.

I was shopping for a monitor and all the reviews on Amazon are great but I can't see the difference on my current monitor or what it actually looks like despite all the specs listed.

I did buy it on Amazon but only after I saw the actual differences in store.

I'd buy more locally if there was more locally to buy. I know it's a small town, but the availability of seemingly common electronics is atrocious. I can't locate, let alone buy, a monitor with greater than 1920x1080 resolution within 100 miles. A keyboard with decent mechanical switches, any form of non-toy quadcopter, even a Raspberry Pi/Arduino/Beaglebone? Somewhere in Seattle or Phoenix, if I'm lucky.

I'd kill to have a Fry's in the state.

About the only form of electronics I'm set for in-town is headphones, and that's just because Headroom was built up from this city.

Sigh. I will buy online for most things. Things I don't: groceries, clothes. (Why: Our meat guy takes orders and we pay and pick up. Avg bill~$55. Grocery doesn't have automated picking -krogers-. Would use it if we could.)

Now, why do I buy online? There's many reasons.

1. I'm price sensitive. I don't make that much, so my money must count. Doing X means not doing Y, even for small values of X. Online is just cheaper.

2. Your place doesn't have what I want. I've went into electronics stores, looking for X. Except what I see is some version less and something much higher. Or they play with model names, where kwin-123xyz-tgt is at Target and kwin123xyz-wmt is at Walmart, and have no differences, other than a model ID that's dependent on store, to prevent price matching.

3. Salespeople are idiots. I've had them try to "inform" me of all sorts of inane "Its really true that..." and other lies or mistruths. I don't need your research, salesperson. Nor do I think you deserve your commission for your BS.

4. Salespeople are pushy (and worse; hard sell). Nothing turns me off from shopping than that behavior. I hate it, and will walk out as soon as they start engaging in it. One case I went back to them after making the sale and told them that their hard sell is why they did not make the sale.

5. Lines suck. As in, really suck. I have the non-choice of waiting in a too long line for some disinterested clerk to ring stuff up. Compare this to Amazon and other web stores where I can click buttons and "BUY....DONE!". Yeah, there's shipping. But I can get on with my day. Lines suck time I'll never get back.

6. Other shoppers. We're approaching the 'Black Days', where you will be neck-to-neck with other crazed deal-going shoppers. Some are in various states of unbathedness whilst many others are completely rude. The net eliminates this, completely... unless you go to forums like Reddit and intentionally find areas like /r/SRS

7. Going to another store = loads to time. I'm looking around 5 mins to park and walk, 10 mins to find, and 5 mins to pay, and 2 mins to leave. Total 22 mins. On the net, I can search a dozen stores at the same time. And nobody complains if I search another company while on the first's web site.

8. I don't get real-time reviews on items in store. I have to rely on the box (marketing), the ads (more marketing), and general feel if there's a sample. Online, I can see the reviews of pretty much anything, can analyze trends in good and bad, and can make a generally informed decision.

9. Pricing issues. I regularly get problems with incorrect prices on things. Usually it's taken care of, but turns out to be a big "Stop registers, send someone to look, and report back". Retarded and inefficient.

10. Coupons/cards. I have an account on some eCommerce site. Or I use Paypal directly and not make an account. It just works. Versus the brick and mortar stores, where they play games with "discounts, but not this way, and not here, but only on that with that". And you need those damned shopper cards. It's one thing to have a single card, but every store wants you to have one.

That enough reasons why?

We have a game store where you can go to play the board games and buy the ones you like. It's crowded but I don't know if people actually purchases things.

Its interesting that none of the case study results faced reality; you're obsolete, pivot or close. Lots of long winded meandering that boils down to fiddling while rome burns. You've got legacy revenue for awhile, real estate, and employees, take advantage of it and pivot. "I know, we'll try to undercut the entire internet" LOL "We'll just work harder than everyone else" LOL "We'll sell only the most expensive products to the richest customers because they like to waste time" LOL "We'll define excellent service as being obnoxious and in your face as possible" LOL The first consultant is featherbedding "We need more consultants to get more data".

For example, Barnes and Noble has abandoned selling books and has pivoted semi successfully into "convenience store for birthday gifts" complete with wrapping. They still have a section of the store for books, but its not really a book store anymore. They have a better chocolate section than my local discount grocery store! In the specific example, moving in on B+N turf isn't going to work as a strategy unless you think you can out B+N, B+N itself.

AFAIK no one has ever tried food and consumer electronics shopping, so eat "real" food while showrooming sample TVs and then order one shipped to your door. This is not entirely insane. A liquor license and pleasant wait staff might discourage showrooming... "Hey everyone gets a round on the house, Joey bought a new TV" woo hoo ...

Something to think about is there is more retail CRE square footage today than ever in the history of the country and its all more or less becoming useless as currently designed and zoned. You may end up pivoting totally out of old fashioned retail, perhaps a fitness club, or barber shop, or restaurant. You want to be the first retail market to become an exercise club not try to be the last. Locally food and other retail stores that have closed have successfully opened as credit union branches, exercise club, restaurants, and car dealerships, more examples probably exist. To make a large scale national strategy, it might be useful to gather this small scale success data. Apparently you cannot pay the rent selling turnips in that specific retail frontage, but you can pay the rent selling time on a bench press machine, interesting...

Alternately you can ride right down into a crater, like that crazy general in Dr Strangelove, if it no longer works just keep on doing what doesn't work but harder than everyone else, what could possibly go wrong? In all honesty if you have no future it does show bravery of a sort to keep doing what you're doing until the bankruptcy, but admit what you're doing, at least, you're just riding a dead business model until impact with the ground, milking the last cash cow till it becomes pink slime.