Customer distrust: Why brick and mortar still survive

By J. N. Halm

They said the advent of online shopping was supposed to have been the final blow to brick-and-mortar shops. The click of every button sounded the death knell for offline shopping. Or so it was supposed to be. Customers, with access to diverse advanced technologies, were supposed to have moved on from the days of shopping in the traditional sense. The term “smart shopping” was to become a household name.

Even before making any purchase, the “smart shopper” would go online and browse for as much information as possible about the item of interest and the various businesses offering that particular item. Thereafter, the customer would gain confidence about the intended purchase. With that confidence, customers would sit in the comfort of their homes and just order items online, pay for the items, and receive them in the comfort of their homes or their workplaces.

But decades down the line, brick-and-mortar outlets still refuse to go away. As a matter of fact, in some areas, brick-and-mortar shopping is actually launching bigger comebacks. Some organisations are seriously opening more physical stores. These businesses, rather than cutting back on investments in brick-and-mortar outlets, are instead investing more into these physical structures. Surprisingly, rather than shift from the offline to the online, some of these major retailers are actually building bigger physical outlets.

Clearly, physical shopping is not going away anytime soon. Today’s customer still wants to get out of bed, take a shower, dress up, and drive through traffic just to visit a retail outlet. Today’s customers do not seem to care about the inconveniences associated with offline shopping. Indeed, what happens more often than not with today’s customers is that they are prepared to start the research phase of shopping online. When it comes to online purchases, a large percentage is accompanied by online research. However, online research does not always end up in online shopping.

There are studies that show that customers might research online about a potential purchase. But they will still want to visit a brick-and-mortar outlet. There is a term for that combination of online research and offline shopping. They call is webrooming. An accompanying term to webrooming is showrooming, where customers will first go and have a feel of the item in a showroom and thereafter, go online to make a purchase.  So whether webrooming or showrooming, the physical store is still an important part of today’s customer’s shopping routine.

One cannot help but wonder why, with all the apps, gadgets, gizmos, and hardware available to aid in online shopping, are customers still taking the time to go to brick-and-mortar shops? Are the efforts, resources, and time spent on visiting physical stores worth it? What is there about offline shopping that still appeals to customers? What is it about online shopping that makes customers not join the bandwagon like it has been anticipated by “experts”?

A study carried out by a couple of South Korean researchers sought to find answers to the aforementioned questions. Titled, “I Can’t Believe Online: A Study on How Negative Reviews Move Online Shoppers to the Offline Channel”, the results were published in the May 2022 edition of the Asia Marketing Journal. According to this particular study, the main reason why customers are still not deserting physical shopping is because of distrust.

The researchers argued that to boost their confidence about a particular purchase, customers would usually resort to checking online reviews as well as seeking more information about the seller. It has been shown at the pre-purchase research phase of the customer’s journey, customers might resort to various channels to gather the necessary information. In fact, a lot more customers resort to multiple channels than those who just use one channel.

The above-referred study asserted that if in the course of the research being done, the customer comes across any negative review, then the chances of the purchase going ahead are reduced significantly. The natural thing for customers to do, if they are not too sure of the online mode of making a purchase, would be to physically go to the outlet from which they are buying from.

It is a fact that one of the biggest disadvantages of online shopping as a mode of shopping is the inability of customers to first handle or touch the product before money exchanges hands. Without the customer having the opportunity to touch the product before making the purchase, the customer is placed in a position of tension. What shows that I would receive exactly what I saw on the Net? What is the proof that the product will get to me exactly the way it has been described on the website? These are questions that would linger in the minds of customers when they are about to part away with their hard-earned money.

It is also important to realise that the concept of Buyer’s Remorse—the feeling of regret that customers feel immediately after they part with money in a purchase situation—is a very real concept. Nobody wants to be hoodwinked in life. It makes one feel silly to be deceived through trickery and subterfuge. Therefore, every customer would want to be doubly sure before making that purchase.

As expected when customers get online to read reviews about potential purchases and they come across a lot of positive reviews, their confidence in the product goes up. However, the problem arises when the customer comes across a lot of negative reviews. The more negative reviews, the less confidence the customer will have in going ahead with that particular purchase.

It is equally important to note that customer distrust is also related to the kind of product the customer intends to purchase. It has been proven that when it comes to experience products, negative reviews can actually harm purchase intentions. Interestingly, when it is a tangible product that can be inspected by the customer, the negative reviews might actually send the customer to the physical store to go inspect the product in question.

This is something that customers cannot do for intangible products. It is next to impossible to pre-test or inspect an experience before paying for it. Therefore, the customer might decide against going ahead with that particular purchase. For instance, one experience product that suffers a lot due to negative reviews are movie viewership. When a particular movies gets lots of negative reviews, it has been proven that ticket sales actually suffer.

It is quite interesting to note that customers normally do not consider the subjectivity of the reviews they are reading online. There are lots of proofs that the negative reviews customers put online could be as a result of a number of factors, which might not be all true. Sometimes, the reviews are based on product misinformation. Customers might say all the wrong things about a particular products simply because they do not like that product. Nothing scientific, just personal preference.

It is entirely possible that there are reviews that customers put out there which are done purely out of mischief, or even for more nefarious reasons. There have been stories about competitors going to great lengths to ensure that competing products are placed in very bad light. Therefore, negative reviews could actually be planted fabricated stories.

One of the important takeaways for retail businesses from the ongoing discussion is to appreciate the importance of online reviews. Businesses cannot treat this particular factor lightly. A lot depends on it. Whether a business likes it or not, customers are going to be depending on what they read online to make important purchasing decisions. Every business that has a product out there must be interested in the reviews out there, especially those reviews that are placed online. It is crucial for the success of the business to make sure that when customers go online to read about its products, a greater percentage of those reviews are very positive.

Businesses must invest in their online presence. Sadly, there are too many businesses in this part of our world who do not fully appreciate the importance of having substantial online presence. These businesses do not have any online presence to talk of. They just do not seem to care. That is most unfortunate. These businesses have no idea how much business they are losing by the minute. If at the research phase of the customer’s journey, a business has no online presence, that business would definitely not be in the running to be considered by that customer.

Beyond the research phase, customers would either commit to making the purchase or they might abort the purchase entirely. It is therefore important for businesses to ensure that purchasing is made easy for the customer. Whether the customer decides to make the purchase online or to walk into a physical store, there must be minimal stress on the customer. This is another area that businesses must make some investments in.

It is clear from the ongoing discourse that customer distrust based on online reviews is one of the key factors that is driving customers to still keep going to brick-and-mortar stores. For so long as customers keep reading reviews about particular reviews and coming across negative reviews, there is always going to be that need to inspect those products. The physical store will therefore always be needed, and so for as long as that need exists, brick and mortar will continue to survive.

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