• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 21, 2012

Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mike Bloxham showrooms cooksbooks. At least not if you knew that Bloxham’s alter ego (when he’s not a media pundit for MediaPost, or working his day job as marketing chief for the Media Behavior Institute) is foodie blogger Fat Englishman. Bloxham disclosed his epicurian showrooming behavior as part of the opening discussion on the Mobile Insider Summit’s aptly named “Showroomer” panel.

Panel moderator Carla Paschke, director of mobile innovation at Enguage, asked each panelist to introduce themselves and share their most recent showrooming experience.

Bloxham said he headed to a Barnes & Noble’s to buy some cookbooks, and noted, “I had no intention of not buying them in the store, but I had every intention of haggling with them in the store.”

After haggling, Bloxham said he actually ended up buying one more cookbook from the retailer than he had originally planned on.

The retail conversation rates of the other showroomers wasn’t so great.

Hans Fredericks, vice president-mobile business development at comScore, said he went to a retailer to research a new appliance to replace a broken one, but ended up buying online, albeit from the same retailers ecommerce site.

Sloane Kelley, director of interactive strategy at BFG, said she went to a show retailer to purchase a new pair of Betsy Johnson “heels,” but they didn’t have her size and she ended up ordering them via Zappos.

Even panel moderator Paschke ended up converting online. The betrothed moderator said she shopped for a wedding veil at several retail locations, but ended up buying it online, because she found a “used one” that she liked. Kind of gives new meaning to the old wedding ditty:

Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
some retailer whose feeling blue

because eBay proved a better option for you