Research Online but Purchase Offline' Motto has Undergone Transition

There is some resistance to buy that red dress online and there is no accurate figure for this but there is evidence of the same. Entering the mobile space, will open doors further and serve as an added opportunity to purchase online. This motto of research online but purchase offline is history. There might not be a major uplift n the use of in-store digital kiosks, but it seems better to give people free WiFi so they can browse the brand's website on their own smartphone. Wherever there is fashion, there is always more than one person's opinion in a store. This is why you have co-browsing on a kiosk, where people are standing around looking at things together and then you have single browsing on a mobile device.

It is tedious to differentiate between who is researching online and who is coming into the store and vice versa. All that is important is to stay where your customers are and try to make their shopping experience as simple and easy as possible. What you can do is click and collect, or if a customer is in-store and her size is not available, then the sale can be made in-store and sent to her home address. Making people realize that there is also an online option to purchase is important. You can have digital displays of your website or flash images to make people understand that there is that element to your brand as well. Online has the benefit of interesting brand content that cannot be accessed in a brick-and-mortar store. Brands are precisely taking advantage of this to promote online purchases.

Given this emerging reality, look for retail companies to stay more or less flat in TV advertising, reduce spend in traditional media, and shift funds to digital media, particularly mobile promotions. Companies are already realizing that offline promotions are becoming an increasingly less productive way to connect with customers.

Mobile devices, however, are becoming the way people interact with brands. As shoppers use their smartphones in-store to check prices, for example, stores will shoot a coupon to them to bridge the gap in prices offered by other stores as a way to keep their sales (65 percent of surveyed shoppers either put off a purchase or change stores after doing a price check). What about mobile payments? This can be a minor disruption but it shall develop very soon.

Online-only stores like Amazon will continue to grow, but mobile will provide more weight in order to win customers as mobile devices — tablets and smartphones — will eliminate the online/offline boundaries. Companies are already realizing that offline promotions are becoming an increasingly less productive way to connect with customers. Its time you started looking for retail companies that are relatively low on TV advertising and other traditional media and shift funds to digital media, especially Mobile App Marketing.