“Showrooming” and the Competition between Store and Online Retailers

Customers often evaluate products at brick-and-mortar stores to identify their “best fit” product, but end up buying this product not at the store but at a competing online retailer to take advantage of lower prices. This free-riding behavior by customers is referred to as “showrooming.” We analyze three strategies to counter the effect of showrooming that may improve profits for the brick-and-mortar stores: (a) price matching, (b) making product matching harder between the brick-and-mortar store and the online retailer, and (c) charging customers for showrooming. We show that only the last two strategies may improve profits of the brick-and-mortar stores. We also present an analysis to illustrate when a particular strategy, (b) or (c), does better than the other.