Showrooming: Retailers Blacklist Customers Who Request Assistance In Store, Then Buy Online

It's not illegal, it may be unethical, but it is certainly becoming habitual.

Retailers are increasingly fighting back against the practice known as 'showrooming:' checking prices in a store, then ordering more cheaply online - often while in the store where they did their comparison shopping.

Consumers see nothing wrong with this. In fact, they believe it to be a right, one of the obvious advantages of owning a mobile phone.

Merchants understandably view it differently. As the following article explains, they believe their services are being stolen, particularly when a customer asks for assistance from an employee, and especially when it involves fitting shoes or clothes. Chain retailers are combatting this trend by providing instore access to their own ecommerce sites, but independents do not have the scale or the resources to offer such convergent approaches. There are attempts to create networks that would mutually benefit such smaller businesses, but none that have attained the sort of size or offer the sort of variety consumers have come to expect.

Instore defenses can include wireless interference to make such comparison-to-purchase activity less convenient. Since the shoppers who tend to do this seem unmoved by better service, another tactic may be screen customers and limit their access. Some have even taken to keeping blacklists of repeat offenders who are asked to leave the store. Ultimately, however, retailers may be helped by the end of the internet tax advantage and constant instore reminders that there is a good reason why customers have come there in the first place. JL

Barney Jopson reports in the Financial Times:

Bricks-and-mortar shops have higher salary and rental costs than internet rivals and store owners say some online buyers are freeriding on their resources. “You’ve come in and stolen that service basically,” said Richard Napier of Idaho Mountain Trading, an outdoor sports store in Idaho Falls, who calls fit-lifting unethical.

If the shoe fits . . . but you don’t buy it, you could soon be tarred with the same brush as shoplifters by shoe store owners.Worried shopkeepers are increasingly frustrated by people they dub “fit-lifters” who use stores to find the best-fitting shoes before buying them online at a lower price.

“It’s not that the salesperson didn’t have somebody else to serve who would have bought something. So not only have you stolen the wages. I have a loss of revenue that he would have collected from another customer.”
It is common for online shoppers to research products in stores in other retail sectors such as bookselling – a practice named “showrooming” – and smartphones make it possible to buy online even while still in a store. But the trend is particularly contentious in footwear because staff spend so much time fetching boxes and advising customers on comfort.
Tensions have been heightened by the price advantage that ecommerce gains from the fact that many online shoppers do not have to pay state and local sales tax, which add between 5 and 10 per cent.
Following years of lobbying by bricks-and-mortar stores, the US Senate is expected on Monday to pass a bill that would help end tax-free online shopping. But it still faces opposition in the House of Representatives. Amazon, which supports the bill, says it offers the lowest prices with or without tax.
Gary Weiner, owner of Saxon Shoes in Virginia and a board member of the National Shoe Retailers Association, said shoe-sellers were “very concerned” about fit-lifting.

“We also hear ‘My mother sent me in to get my size fitted so she can buy them online’. Those exact words,” he said. “We’re a polite people. So we give them the time of day.”
Asked if he had considered refusing, he said: “We think about it every single time. Do we say it? No. You can’t say it out loud.”
David Suddens, chief executive of British footwear brand Dr Martens, said he would not be surprised if the same phenomenon was happening in the UK as shoes, with half sizes, were especially difficult to fit.
He said that the trend reflected the realities of a world where consumers were able to shop around both in-store and online, and there was little shoe retailers could do about it. “People want to buy things multi-channel, check them out in store and buy online, it’s the way of the world.”
Ecommerce sales account for 10 per cent of footwear and clothing consumption in the US and are likely to increase 10 per cent this year while the sector as a whole expands by 2-3 per cent, according to Moody’s.
Mr Napier said his employees could spend as much as an hour helping customers to find the right fit of footwear such as contoured sandals or ski boots.
“They say ‘I’m going to think about it’ and a couple of weeks later you see them on the ski slope and they bought online,” he said. “It’s not right.”
Zappos, an online shoe-seller owned by Amazon, encourages shoppers to order two or more different sizes, which they can return for free, in an effort to overcome customer reluctance to buy without trying.