• by Tom Hespos , November 8, 2004

I read with interest an article on the results of a study released last week by Yahoo!. The study looked at 1,200 Internet users who read their newspaper offline at least three times a week, comparing their shopping habits.

More than half of these people used the Internet for product purchase information. Of those folks, 35 percent purchased product exclusively offline, 29 percent exclusively online, and the rest purchased products both online and offline.

We know that offline purchasers frequently check online before coming to retail stores, whether that's to check prices, compare products, or get other types of information about a potential purchase. But as to their purchase behavior after gathering information online, we can only fathom guesses.

According to the article, Yahoo!'s retail category development guy thinks folks are going to brick-and-mortar retail stores for instant gratification. But we also know that consumers sometimes need to see and feel a product before they feel comfortable enough to purchase.

There are many reasons why consumers jump between online and offline channels when making purchase decisions. And those reasons may be different for different retail brands. While it's nice to know that online campaigns for retailers result in both online and offline sales, I think the bigger challenge is for each brand to understand how their online efforts contribute to offline and vice versa.

When I think about my own personal behavior vis-à-vis retail shopping, my habits change by category and by retailer. For instance, I know to order exclusively online from one particular general retailer, because I've been disappointed in the past when trying to find products advertised online in the brick-and-mortar shops.

On the other hand, I know to avoid buying online with another retailer because they habitually ship products late. I also know to do thorough research at a particular consumer electronics retailer's Web site before going into the store because the people working the floor haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about.

My point, is that different retailers are going to observe different shopping patterns among their consumers who use multiple channels. The good news is that we know the online and offline retail channels tend to feed one another. The bad news is that there's no "one size fits all" solution for understanding how those channels work together.

Each retailer needs to do a SWOT analysis for each channel AND for the totality of the shopping experience, based on direct customer feedback, to help assess how these channels are and should be working together. It's one thing if your online channel is doing well because it provides a superior experience when compared to others in your category. It's another thing entirely if that success is driven by defectors from the offline channel who think your floor associates are biscuitheads who can't give them the help they need.

Analysis should be geared toward understanding why customers shop the way they shop with respect to a given retail brand, as opposed to developing generalizations about how they utilize the entirety of the click-and-mortar retail sector.