Consumers Visit Retailers, Then Go Online for Cheaper Sources

Target and Best Buy have been fighting back against showrooming, where people check out the goods in brick-and-mortar stores with the express intent of finding them cheaper online (hello, Amazon). But Placed, a mobile analytics company, found that those retailers are far from alone in being showroomed.

Placed gets its data from measuring the physical location of mobile phone users who consent to be tracked and overlaying it with survey data about people's brick-and-mortar shopping behaviors, and also dug up some interesting data about showrooming habits by gender. And there's more reason for retailers to be concerned. According to Gartner research, less than 10 percent of consumers give the business to the online site of the retailer that they showroomed.