First came showrooming (examining items in-store and price shopping online), and then came webrooming (researching online and buying in-store). UK-based e-commerce Agency, RedSnapper, has recently uncovered a new trend in online consumer behaviour – Boomerooming.

Boomerooming is the process of researching products online, visiting a physical store to see/feel/touch/try a product in the flesh and find the best deals online before making the final purchase.

Showrooming has been a cause for concern for bricks and mortar retailers for several years, until a study was released by Merchant Warehouse earlier this year, revealing that 69% of smartphone users had webroomed, compared to just 50% claiming they had showroomed – a much-welcomed sigh of relief for offline retailers.

RedSnapper took Merchant Warehouse’s research one step further to identify whether consumers were actually using a combination of webrooming and showrooming in a practice they aptly dubbed, ‘Boomerooming’.

The research found that 62% of UK consumers had in fact boomeroomed, which debunks the idea that the ‘physical store experience’ and convenience prevails over a bargain-priced product.

The research looked into what consumers’ main gripes with shopping online are, and the overwhelming majority stated that not being able to see/touch/try a product in the flesh was the main issue. Through the process of boomerooming, consumers can have their cake AND eat it; products are researched online, seen in the flesh in-store and then bought online for the lowest price possible.

The research can be found in its entirety at http://www.redsnapper.net/boomerooming.