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Top1. Introduction
Advances in the continuous development of intelligent terminals and mobile technologies contribute to the growing prevalence of online shopping (Izogo and Jayawardhena 2018) and the change of consumer behavior and psychology. Consumers care more about quality experience and service in purchasing not only about low prices and discounts (Bachrach et al., 2016). They increasingly find it advantageous to first inspect the product at a physical store for sure whether to buy before online purchase (Balakrishnan et al. 2014; Rapp et al. 2015; Kuksov and Liao 2018). An Accenture survey on customer experience founds that 60% of consumers are willing to pay a higher price if it ensures a superior consumption experience (Jacobson et al. 2016). Therefore, increasing firms have invested significantly to open showrooms as one of the most effective ways to deliver product information and provide a better consumer experience. Besides most showrooms originally performed in stores of furniture and electronics industry, the concept of showrooms has also been recently incorporated into the electronic retailing and fashion industry such as Amazon, Warby Parker and Bonobos. With Amazon as an example, since the first offline showroom opening in Seattle in November 2015, Amazon has maintained a great customer experience and achieved a significant improvement in operational efficiency (Dustin 2015; Paul 2017). In addition, Amazon from 2019 began to open 100 showrooms in India (Merlyn 2019). Some other brand owners, such as Apple, Canon, Warby Parker, Bonobos and Casper, have also opened brand showrooms (Du et al. 2019; Macmillan 2014; Bell et al. 2018; Chavie 2018). These firms mostly set up showrooms purely displaying products to improve the consumers’ shopping experience, and then consumers purchase products they like from the same firm’s online store.
Besides increasing the demand for their products, for brand owners and e-tailers, the main reason for opening offline showrooms is different. Specifically, brand owners can provide experiential service for consumers to enhance brand awareness and satisfaction. The practice of Bonobos and Warby Parker has shown that opening showrooms helps to expand brand influence and improve consumer brand awareness (Bell et al. 2017). E-tailers opening showrooms can drive more traffic to their platforms by offline information delivery and improve overall operational efficiency by reducing returns and observing consumers’ behavior. For example, Amazon’s showrooms always provide experiential products and corresponding barcodes at the same time. Consumers can experience the products and buy them on their mobile devices (Paul 2017). Furthermore, consumers’ uncertainty about whether products fit their anticipation is also a major issue that curbing their purchase desire when purchasing online. By improving the effectiveness of information, consumers can inspect the products and obtain professional advice from shopping guides in showrooms. Meanwhile, showrooms can also promote consumers’ visiting. However, brand owners and e-tailers opening showrooms are not as easy as bricks-and-mortar retailers adding online stores, because the cost of offline showroom investment is far higher than the cost of online store. They need to invest appropriate costs that building and serving to ensure the effectiveness of experience. Thus, for a supply chain composed of the brand owner and e-tailer, members should make careful decisions on an investor, investment cost and pricing concerning the above implications of showroom investment.