Millennials are most likely to research products on their phone while in-store; 74% characterized that behavior as something they would do, followed by Gen Z (69%) and Gen X (60%). Boomers are far less likely to showroom (33%).
But while ecommerce still represents a small proportion of total retail sales in the US—we expected that share will reach 10.0% this year—digital plays an assisting role.
According to Forrester Research, half of all retail sales in the US are digitally influenced, which is to say a consumer used a digital device before or during a shopping trip. The company predicts that figure will rise to 58% by 2022. This is lower than what Deloitte estimated in late 2016, when the firm claimed 56% of all US in-store sales were digitally influenced, with mobile devices accounting for 37%. By both measures, it's probably fair to say that at least half of all US sales are digitally influenced.
There is also evidence that shoppers who use more channels are more valuable. A November 2017 Criteo survey found that omnichannel shoppers worldwide represented just 7% of all consumers (49% were offline-only, while 44% were online-only), but they were responsible for 27% of all sales.