Price versus service: Can retailers beat showrooming with competence?

摘要

Showrooming is a behavior of information gathering in offline stores before purchasing from an online retailer (usually at a lower price). As showrooming is a serious problem for offline retailers, this study investigates how they can compensate a price disadvantage against the online channel with service strategies. Two experiments examine the effects of (1) offline price disadvantage levels and service usage and (2) service quality and availability on showrooming. Results indicate that mere service usage can partly compensate price disadvantages. While service quality reduces showrooming, service availability only shows an impact when quality is high. Price fairness mediates these effects.