Research pick: Clicks and mortar - "Adding bricks to clicks: Which characteristic of a showroom affects consumers when they shop online?"

When the world wide web was opened up to the commercial world in the 1990s, there was a suggestion that it would not become popular and so-called “bricks and mortar” sellers with shops on the high streets and in the shopping centres would outlive the online fad. The so-called dot com bubble burst at the dawn of the 21st Century, but more than two decades later we can safely say online shopping is now ubiquitous while many shop fronts are now boarded up and many of the large department stores and chains have disappeared.

Writing in the EuroMed Journal of Management, a team from Egypt discusses an emerging trend that sees the reversal of the original paradigm whereby online retailers are now opening shops and encouraging customers to walk through their doors rather than browse online.

Abeer A. Mahrous and Ola Tarek of the Faculty of Commerce, Business Administration Department at Cairo University and Wael Kortam of the Faculty of Business Administration, Economics & Political Science at The British University in Egypt in Sherouk City, suggest that this move is driven by the consumer’s obvious desire to have more certainty when buying, which can be achieved by touching and feeling the goods in a bricks-and-mortar store. However, once the online retailers have hooked customers offline in this way, the hope is that those customers will then opt for the online option with subsequent and repeat purchases.

The team discusses the cognitive attributes that initially draw a shopper to an offline store and how their loyalty to the outlet is transferred to the online shopping experience. Fundamentally, it seems that a goal-oriented shopper drawn to the offline shop is more likely to make further purchases from the online outlet. The research suggests that the design of the offline store and salesperson style and communication within the store is important in persuading new customers to make purchases there initially and then to transfer their loyalty seamlessly to the online store.

Mahrous, A.A., Tarek, O. and Kortam, W. (2022) ‘Adding bricks to clicks: Which characteristic of a showroom affects consumers when they shop online?’, EuroMed J. Management, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.332–344.