The Institute for Self-Reliance recently released a survey of local businesses. One topic they covered was showrooming and as the chart below shows, it's having an impact on local retailers.
As we pointed out last year, showrooming is just starting to reach a tipping point and its impact on retailers will substantially increase over the next couple of years.
We think showrooming will also expand beyond retail price checking - customers of all types of business will increasingly use showrooming tactics to find better prices.
Showrooming is the opening salvo in a big data driven war for customers. This war will intitally be fought in the retail industry with Amazon, WalMart and other large retailer battling each other as well as local businesses.
But we expect this war to quickly expand to other industry sectors. Transparency in a digital world is too powerful a trend for it not to.
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