Research online, purchase offline

Research online, purchase offline (ROPO) (also known as online-to-store, reverse showrooming, or webrooming), is a trend in buying behaviour where customers research product information online, including verifying information to qualify their buying decision, before they decide to buy their chosen product in a physical store. This behaviour is very common and product category can impact the extent to which people do this.

Due to ROPO, having a good online presence can help to influence in-store sales. The ROPO effect allows companies that advertise to calculate their overall return on investment (ROI) more precisely, by multiplying their online sales with the online to store sales factor, where relevant. By doing this, the total revenue generated by an Online marketing advertising campaign becomes known to the advertiser. ROPO can in some instances be equated to Click and Collect sales, that is, the process of online reservation and subsequent collection of the product at a store. ROPO is one of the reasons having an effective Multichannel marketing strategy is important.

Its opposite is showrooming: researching a product in a physical store before buying it online. Several studies and sources have shown that researching online, before purchasing offline is more common than showrooming.

People who research online and purchase offline using the same company are known as loyal webroomers and those who purchase from a different business are known as competitive webroomers. Research has shown that shoppers who research online before purchasing offline focus more on product attributes and are more confident shoppers. Academic interest in researching this phenomenon is increasing.

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