Shopping online is quick and easy – surfing through Amazon in your underwear means no long lines to deal with or wandering through aisles of stuff to find the one thing you want. When shoppers do find themselves in a physical location, more often than not they check out a product in person and then use bar code scanning apps to find the best deal for their item online without having to make an in-store purchase. What’s a big box retailer to do?
The New York Times‘s Stephanie Clifford reports that big retailers like Walmart, Macy’s and Best Buy are adapting by turning their stores into extensions of their online businesses. In April, Walmart began letting shoppers pay for online products in cash at their stores to appeal to customers without bank accounts or credit cards. Walmart chief executive tells Clifford that more than half of the company’s online sales are now picked up at Walmart stores.
SEE ALSO: How Augmented Reality Is Shaping the Future of RetailSome retailers are going even further. The Container Store offers a drive-through service for online purchases and aims to end transactions as soon as possible so customers don’t take their money elsewhere. Nordstrom and Macy’s have combined their physical and online inventories. If for example nordstrom.com is sold out of a product, customers can have their item shipped to them from a retail store. By the end of 2012, Macy’s will have almost 300 stores that can ship items to online customers.
Would these new shopping options make you more likely to step inside an honest-to-goodness physical retail store? Tell us what you think in the comments.
[Via The New York Times]
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, leaf
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