Most Shoppers Still Don’t ‘Showroom,’ Study Shows

Brick-and-mortar retailers’ fears about "showrooming," where consumers use stores to browse and research products before buying them online, may be real but the phenomenon is still not used by most shoppers. According to an IBM survey of 30,554 consumers globally at the end of November, only 8 percent of them said they "showroomed," despite an increase from 6 percent in the prior year. Meanwhile, the survey showed 30 percent of total online purchases resulted from showrooming, a drop from about 50 percent a year earlier.