With the widespread use of smartphones, showrooming—where consumers browse products in stores and then purchase online—has become commonplace. While this is a convenient practice for buyers, it can also lead to sales leakage for retailers. In this article, we’ll explain the background to why showrooming is gaining attention, the advantages for businesses that support it, and some case studies of success in Japan.

What’s in this article?

• What is showrooming?
  
• Survey data on showrooming
  
• Why showrooming is gaining attention
  
• Issues with showrooming
  
• How to handle showrooming
  
• Examples of successful showrooming by companies
  
• How Stripe Terminal can help
  

What is showrooming?

Showrooming is when customers visit a physical store to gather item information by handling and trying products, but they do not make a purchase there. They place the order on a website instead.

This pattern is a behavior in which people seek to buy goods at a lower price. In Japan, web prices are often lower than those in retail locations, so shoppers compare them online and try to buy from the cheapest ecommerce site.

However, for items such as clothing and shoes, where texture and fit can only be truly assessed by trying them on in person, checking these offerings in a brick-and-mortar store before purchasing on the web is natural. For large items such as furniture or bulky appliances, which you wouldn’t be able to take home yourself, ordering on the internet is also the logical choice. There are also times when placing an order online is necessary, such as when the store doesn’t have the size you want.

Differences from webrooming

In contrast to showrooming, there’s also a consumer behavior called webrooming. While the former involves checking items in retail locations before checking out on a website, webrooming involves researching details on brand or marketplace sites before buying at the register.

The main factors driving this are as follows:

• People want to interact with staff directly and feel more confident when actually making the purchase.
  
• Shoppers don’t want to share their personal data with an ecommerce site.
  
• Buying in person is less expensive.
  
• Consumers don’t want to wait for delivery.
  

Survey data on showrooming

A survey carried out by the Japan Fair Trade Commission in 2019, called the Survey Report on the State of Consumer Ecommerce Transactions, showed the following results:

Experience and frequency

A survey of 2,000 online mall users found that 930 respondents (46.5%) had engaged in this behavior, while 1,070 people surveyed (53.5%) had not. Among the 930 participants who reported showrooming, 61% did so once a month.

Affected product categories

When asked which categories they had used showrooming for, the most common responses were home appliances, followed by apparel, shoes, and fashion accessories. Some also said furniture, interior goods, and cosmetics.

People tend to browse in person and then buy online when purchasing high-priced items or products that require hands-on inspection or verification.

Sales channels

After a consumer showroomed, the most common place of checkout was an online mall (46%), followed by a physical store (31%) and the manufacturer’s or retailer’s site (23%). While many people completed their orders on the web, a significant number still visited a retail location or official website to complete the sale, making this trend impossible to ignore.

Trends by population density

Studies show that showrooming increases in areas with higher residential population density:

• Regions with high population density: 53%
  
• Regions with midlevel population density: 43%
  
• Regions with low population density: 39%
  

In other words, consumers in urban areas are more likely to engage in this approach than those in rural areas.

Why showrooming is gaining attention

As ecommerce has expanded, customers have demanded better prices and greater convenience online. Despite this, physical showrooms are gaining attention as places to actually “experience” products for real.

Changes in consumer behavior as a result of the expansion of ecommerce

The rise of online malls and ecommerce sites has allowed shoppers to complete the process of searching for, comparing, and finally purchasing goods entirely on the internet.

Nevertheless, for some items, online information alone is insufficient, and many people still want to see, feel, and try the item in person first. As a result, the trend of visiting a store to check out products and then placing an order on a site has become widespread.

The importance of experiential value

Furniture, appliances, clothing, and other items often have characteristics that are difficult to grasp from images or videos alone, and it’s hard to decide without checking them out in a retail setting. In particular, items that are difficult to return are more likely to be showroomed to prevent purchasing mistakes.

Suitability for urban lifestyles

The Japan Fair Trade Commission’s survey revealed that showrooming is especially common in densely populated urban areas, where residents often prioritize time efficiency and act rationally—inspecting goods in person before buying them online at the lowest price.

Issues with showrooming

Showrooming risks turning brick-and-mortar stores into little more than display spaces. Retailers also face the challenge of failing to achieve returns that reflect their investments.

Costs that don’t translate into sales

The psychology of these shoppers is that they want to buy goods as cheaply as possible. In other words, they view retail locations as nothing more than a place to see and experience products. In-store service doesn’t guarantee a sale; the customer might still not make a purchase.

Physical stores must maintain inventory and pay service staff, but when visitors don’t buy on-site, cost-effectiveness suffers.

How to handle showrooming

Some measures are necessary to address showrooming effectively. Let’s take a look at the measures needed.

Improve omnichannel strategy

When shoppers examine products in person but complete their order on the web, it is key to guide them to place their checkout through your own sales channels.

Companies need to consider using the following omnichannel measures to ensure this:

• Consolidate pricing and inventory information.
  
• Establish a system for in-store pickup of online orders.
  
• Enable the use of membership programs for both in-store and online.
  

Value-added offerings that are only available in-store

In an era where it is convenient to order things cheaply on the internet, it’s important to clearly define the value of shopping in-store and devise ways to make patrons feel that “buying in-store is a better deal.”

To achieve this goal, consider implementing the following measures:

• Offer extended warranty periods and repair services exclusively for in-store purchases.
  
• Establish systems and delivery services at retail locations that make it possible to take the order home immediately.
  
• Have in-store exclusive colors, sizes, or combo sets.
  

Examples of successful showrooming by companies

Rather than viewing showrooming as simply a threat, Japanese companies are using OMO (online-merge-offline)/omnichannel strategies, along with app initiatives, to drive traffic across their shops and online ecosystems.

Nitori

Nitori is implementing an OMO strategy that allows customers to “experience” furniture and other interior decor items on-site while completing the order through an application or internet channel. On May 20, 2025, a new app and website launched, unifying shop inventory and delivery details to make information clear and accessible at a glance. Members who use both retail locations and digital platforms make twice as many purchases annually as store-only users, and their annual spend is 2.5 times higher, clearly demonstrating the benefits of combining the application and ecommerce.

In addition, they recently implemented omnichannel payments, which allow buyers to use the app to pay for and arrange delivery of items they saw in-store.

Nitori has established a process that allows shoppers to check products in person before ordering online, thereby curbing leakage to third-party marketplaces and keeping customers from leaving to buy at competitors.

Bic Camera

Bic Camera prevents attrition and sales declines by guaranteeing consistent pricing across its website and physical locations, eliminating instances where shoppers leave because listings are lower on Bic Camera’s own ecommerce site. However, it is impossible to avoid cases in which other web marketplaces, such as Amazon, offer better prices. To combat this, Bic Camera is also improving its value beyond price.

These measures include providing a sense of speed through in-store pickup (buy online, pickup in store, also known as “BOPIS”) and same-day delivery, savings from reward points, and the convenience of instantly checking inventory and reviews via digital shelf displays. These efforts will likely make customers feel that purchasing at Bic Camera ensures a smooth, trouble-free shopping experience.

How Stripe Terminal can help

Stripe Terminal allows businesses to grow revenue with unified payments across in-person and online channels. It supports new ways to pay, simple hardware logistics, global coverage, and hundreds of POS and commerce integrations to design your ideal payments stack.

Stripe powers unified commerce for brands such as Hertz, URBN, Lands’ End, Shopify, Lightspeed, and Mindbody.

Stripe Terminal can help you:

• Unify commerce: Manage online and in-person payments on a global platform with unified payments data.
  
• Expand globally: Scale to 24 countries with a single set of integrations and popular payment methods.
  
• Integrate your way: Develop your own custom POS app or connect with your existing tech stack using third-party POS and commerce integrations.
  
• Simplify hardware logistics: Easily order, manage, and monitor Stripe-supported readers, wherever they are.
  

Learn more about Stripe Terminal, or get started today.