Showrooming Customers and the Future of Online Price Matching

Beyond beginning the long-term evolution to becoming an omnichannel organization, retailers should do the following:

• Understand deeply your customers and their buying habits across all channels.
• Put in place a competitive analysis program to monitor both brick-and-mortar and online competitors’ merchandise, pricing and promotions.
• Based on the output of two points above, consider an informed price-matching policy.
• Be clear and consistent about your policy.
• Provide training and other communications to ensure in-store staff understands your price-matching policy.
• No matter what, focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience. Customers will be less concerned about price matching if they're loyal to your brand.

One of my favorite industry quotes is "Be everywhere, do everything and never fail to astonish the customer." It's a terrific omnichannel sentiment that could have been written in 2013, but it wasn't. That quote is from Margaret Getchell, Macy's first store manager, in 1866. In everything retailers do — price matching or otherwise — retailers should take this quote to heart.