Ever heard of it? It’s one of those new words they make from a noun, making it even nounier, which I find slightly sinister just on principle. You’ll probably find it a lot more sinister, though, because it’s a term for the act of going into a store, learning all about a product, seeing it in person, touching it, feeling it ... and then going home to order it off the Internet.
Maybe not even waiting until they get home: With Amazon’s price-check app, a shopper could scan a bar code in the store. If Amazon has it, it promises to beat the price by 5 percent. With one-click ordering turned on, an order could be on its way before the store door hits him in the behind.
So, what’s a jewelry store to do? We recently asked INSTORE Brain Squad members whether they have changed their strategy due to competition from the Internet. We publish the results in our upcoming May issue, but I’ll let you in on the results right now: 49 percent said yes, they have changed their strategy, and 51 percent said nope, they’ve stayed the course. I think it would be an interesting question to ask again in a year and see if the numbers change.
Meantime, however, Brain Squad members offer their strategies to compete and their reasons why they don’t in the next edition of Do You/Don’t You in INSTORE’s May issue.
Remember too, that if the few answers we print in the magazine are of interest to you and you want to read more of them, the full uncut list of answers to all our monthly surveys are available to members of our Brain Squad. Membership is free, and you get a free T-shirt sent after you take your first survey.
So step one of addressing the new Internet competition and such modern-day retail horrors of Showrooming might just be joining our Brain Squad. Go to www.instoremag.com/brainsquad to join.
