Understanding the Research-Shopper Phenomenon

The research-shopper phenomenon is the way of consumers to research a product in one type of channel and then purchase it though another. Three drivers are acknowledging the increase this research-shopper phenomenon. These are:

• Decision making driven by attributes

• Lack of channel lock-in

• Cross-channel synergy.

Decision making driven by attributes

This type of decision-making is based on the mechanism that people choose one channel instead of another because it excels on attributes determining the searching.

People often do research on the Internet because it is easier than doing it in a shop, since that mostly costs more time and effort. At the same time people might find it safer to buy something in a shop instead of buying it online.

Lack of channel lock-in

High channel lock-in occurs when people that are researching shopping will also purchase it at the same channel, because they are highly correlated. Thus if these would be only little correlated, and a lack of channel lock-in exists, research shopping will be a result.

Cross-channel synergy

This may contribute to research shopping because when doing research on one channel it might raise the willingness to purchase on another channel. It might for example help researching different prices of products on the internet, which give you a better idea where to purchase it in store.

Managing research shopping

Internet-store research shopping is the most common form of research shopping. This is mostly due to the ease of the Internet in doing research and the strong factor of safety concerning purchasing in a shop, as well as a lack of lock-in for the Internet and the experienced cross-channel synergy between using the internet for search and as a result using the store for purchase.

Research shopping is mostly seen as a negative thing. Especially for firms that only sell on the internet it is received as negative. Managing the research shopping phenomenon is mostly looking at the factors mentioned above and changing them where needed.