Comparing Online and Purchasing Offline
For e-commercants it is frustrating to know that people have gone into the new age of comparing products and services “online” and navigate like experts through special offers and shops however when it comes to the actual purchase the majority still prefer to purchase the item in a real shop.
Conservative or natural?
I think that this is very natural and it is time for the e-commerce sites, portals and shops alike, to unite the two worlds better and that goes beyond having a print-ready format of the product on the site. The idea seems old-school that shoppers then need to go into the shop and hand over the printed product sheet as price proof to bargain. Perhaps we all want the product information on the phone in the form of a SMS, blackberry message, note, and I don’t know what?
There is a lot of room for improvement and Mediaplex, part of the Valueclick group, are attempting in understanding better this “online-offline” relationship by having customer-card related tracking services but is this all there can be?
Are European merchants ready to be confronted with the transparency of comparative search engines to match prices, like in Australia where many shops guarantee to beat advertised prices from competitors? Have Europeans finally travelled enough to become open to the idea of bargaining as much as they do on their holidays (many occidentals claim to be bargaining experts when on holiday but why don’t they do it at home?)
I have spent some years in countries where bargaining is part of the culture and everyday life and I think that the momentum of the mass to bargain has not been outsourced to its limit. Why can’t we mobilize the mass to reset the prices? Flashmob and MediaMarkt give you an idea of where my thoughts are headed.
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Tags: bargain, comparison, e-Commerce, flashmob, information, mediamarkt, mediaplex, portal, shop, valueclick