In today’s omni-channel environment, there are so many different buyer types coming in. Some want to buy online and pick up their purchases in-store. Some just want to window shop on a website, but potentially make final purchase decisions in a brick-and-mortar location. Still others want to comparison shop on their phones while perusing a store's racks.   One of the common themes facing retailers, however, is that there’s often a separation of inventory for in-store versus online. The challenge then...

Research. Scientists do it. Grad students do it. And so do consumers. In fact, consumers are doing so much online research that marketers are reassessing what their abandoned shopping cart rates really mean. What was once blanketed as a lost sale might now indicate nothing more than a customer checking out prices on the web before buying them at a later date at a brick-and-mortar location.   Conducting product research now to buy later is just one of many indicators revealing...