Now its Webrooming

People who are from the retail space, especially, from the physical retail space would know (and hate) ‘showrooming.’ Showrooming is when shoppers do their research/product discovery including doing trials for fit and look in an offline store and eventually buy from a different retailer or store online.

The new trend that the last holiday season saw was ‘webrooming.’ No guesses for what it means and am sure a lot of offline retailers are giving their sly smiles at the mention of this. The question, however, is webrooming for real and will it sustain.

I won’t spoil the offline retailers’ party (if they are already celebrating this trend) and assume that this trend is here to stay. Omni-channel then becomes the next wave of retail (r)evolution.

What’s the next big thing Indian eCommerce will see? A lot of Flipkart, Myntra or SnapDeal stores opening up in a mall near you? I’ll let time answer that for now.

Side Note: Flipkart tried its first version that did not quite take off. FirstCry has gone the affiliate model way to test the markets and that seems to be doing quite okay. Watch this space as consumer continues to call shots in the Indian retail space.