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Online vs. Offline Shopping – Consumer Choice or Retail Bully Tactics?
In today’s retail environment the shop floor has transcended into cyberspace and traditional consumer boundaries of access to products and services have skewed. With this comes a multitude of purchasing options for today’s web savvy shoppers, all accessible in a second from innumerable vendors and locations. A technological advantage for some, or a confusing plethora of unneeded options for others? One thing’s for sure, our individual shopping preferences and tendencies can really demonstrate a lot about ourselves.
Consumers that shop in a physical sense, by this I refer to high street shopping, often fall prey to various psychological factors associated with interaction with friendly sales assistants and shop managers. None of these factors more powerful than the shoppers ingrained psychology of purchase obligation.
Considerable time spent with customers, or perhaps extended friendly discourse often initiates a relationship of trust and a feeling of well being on the customer’s part. This build up of trust, however temporary, often results in a feeling of obligation on the consumer’s part to reciprocate with a purchase. One could compare the purchase to a friendly pat on the back for the sales assistant on the consumer’s behalf, or perhaps at the other end of the spectrum, a tip left for a snooty waiter due to the obligation engendered by social conventions and pressures.
For a consumer to back out of a sale when this relationship of trust has been built up with a sales assistant is like a kick in the teeth or a bad reference from a past employer! How rude of you for wasting my time! Is my product not of high enough quality for you sir? Many shoppers fall prey to such psychological factors; can the world of e-commerce act as a safe haven from bossy boots store managers and clever second hand car dealers?
When you shop online no one is there to guide you through the sale, some shoppers like this, others find it less informative, but one thing’s for sure, no one’s there to hold your hand online. For years e-commerce websites have tried there best to emulate the success of the “sales assistant,” to guide shoppers to the Holy Grail that is the store counter or online basket.
There are numerous examples of e-commerce websites emulating offline environments or forms of sales person to consumer interaction. Smart chat systems such as Intellichat are often utilised on e-commerce websites to close sales, offer additional product information, all essentially to re-assure the tentative shopper that they are making the right decision. As well as these systems attempts at providing the information the consumer needs to feel re-assured that the sale is the right choice, they often emulate the scenario of obligation to purchase experienced in the offline environment. Pretty pictures of women and automated sales pitches act like real life sales assistants, often offering last minute discount offers to convince shoppers to put their hand in their back pocket.
Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking these feelings of obligation may not affect you? Or that your hardy retail wise personality would prevent such shopping blunders from ever occurring? However there are many vulnerable consumers out there with impressionable personalities that fall prey to such techniques every day.
So how do you react in these situations? Often I find myself obliged to purchase when I have received good service, but perhaps this is due to experience as a sales assistant? I recognize good service and therefore I appreciate it, this in itself gives me confidence in the establishment I buy from and as result often the quality of the product.
Online the role of a sales assistant is rapidly being replaced by other trusting shoppers. Reviewing and rating as they go, spreading the word to other shoppers via popular social portals such as Facebook, bad service really can’t hide! It’s like a high street shopping conspiracy, or a secret meeting of thousands of people in a shop changing room!
The various factors consumers assess prior to purchase (quality, product re-assurance, information and service) haven’t changed at all. Online shopping it seems has just changed the delivery methods of such information and the way in which we receive and assess it. One thing’s for certain for today’s consumers, whether you favour the hustle and bustle of high street shopping, or the individual experience of the wonderful world of e-commerce, the consumer has nowhere to hide!
Author: Simon English – Purple Coffee Interactive, Guernsey, Channel Islands.
