The balance of commerce has tipped strongly towards retailers who have a notable online presence, bringing with it opportunity and risk. For offline retailers, the risk of business survival is more precarious as more and more people access goods and services online.
When goods are purchased online a consumer has to weigh up what the item will be like from a photograph. Some consumers are happy to do this. Other consumers like to physically touch the object before buying it.
While there’s still a big market for retailers in terms of those who want to look and feel a product before purchasing it, offline retailers are losing ground to more aggressive online businesses. However, according to analysis from the Journal of Retailing at New York University, offline companies can still challenge online retailers by making full use data gleaned from online retail to boost their own sales.
Concrete or abstract thinking consumers
In research led by Wumei Liu, the study shows how the effect of being able to touch a product is based on the individual’s mindset. This relates to whether a person thinks concretely or abstractly? This is a key psychological factor impacting on purchase decisions.
With concrete thinkers, product touch is important. However, for abstract thinkers, this is far less of an issue. What the offline retailer needs to do is track down and market to concrete thinkers. This can be achieved by data mining the wealth of consumer research data available through the Internet. Once concrete thinkers have been identified they can then be target them with appropriate marketing strategies.
The use of pyschographics
Such data can be obtained through syndicated psychographic data on consumers. This provides segmented data about consumer purchase intentions. The identified consumers can then be targeted by retailers in different ways, such as offering free trials of products to this type of consumer. Psychographics can be as important as demographics when it comes to understanding consumer purchasing tendencies.
The new research has been published in the Journal of Retailing, with the research paper headed “Product Touch and Consumers’ Online and Offline Buying: The Role of Mental Representation.”
