Slightly more than half of online U.S. consumers — or 51% — said they have researched a product online, and then bought it at a retail store, according to a study released this week by Forrester Research.
Moreover, 45% said they buy more products once in the store, resulting in an average of $154 in incremental purchases, the Cambridge, MA-based researcher reported.
“This behavior enables the Web to affect store sales, making cross-channel shoppers the segment to watch over the next five years,” said the report by analyst Tamara Mendelsohn.
The top reason consumers gave for buying products offline after researching them online was immediacy. Fifty one percent said they wanted the products right away and didn’t want to wait for them to be shipped, according to Forrester.
The second most popular reason — cited by 42% of respondents — for researching online but buying offline was wanting to see the product before buying it, according to the report.
Forty percent said they didn’t want to pay shipping costs, making postage the third most popular reason, according to Forrester.
Not surprisingly, consumer electronics is the No. 1 category of products consumers research online and buy at retail. Second is home d
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