Retail-Blog

Forrester Research estimates that online research influences more than $400 billion in in-store sales, and predicts that figure will exceed $1.1 trillion by 2012. But consumers often go to one retailer’s web site to check out a product, then buy it in another retailer’s store. “That means there’s a huge opportunity for retailers to engage customers across channels,” says Tamara Mendelsohn, author of Forrester’s new cross-channel sales forecast report. 51% of online shoppers say they research products on the web and then buy them in stores. And 45% of them say they buy additional items once in the store, spending on average $154 on those other items. Asked why they purchased the product offline rather than on the web, the most common answer was to obtain the product immediately (51%), followed by wanted to see the item before purchasing it (42%), did not want to pay shipping costs (40%), and it was more convenient to buy offline (27%).