Study: 'Showrooming' going mainstream ahead of holiday season

Summary: At first glance, this might spell doom for brick-and-mortar retailers. However, there are some lessons to be learned and opportunities to be realized if they act quickly.

Have you ever walked into a store and seen a product you liked, but then instead of buying it there you compared the price and bought it online?

If that is true, then not only are you alone, but you are one of many contributing to a new trend heavily disrupting retail: "Showrooming."

Essentially, this is the practice of visiting a brick-and-mortar store but giving the real business to the likes of Amazon.com and other online warehouses with considerably cheaper prices, and sometimes no sales tax and/or free shipping to sweeten the deal.

A new study from mobile marketing firm Vibes suggests that the showrooming trend has gone fully mainstream in just one year, arguing that most consumers are doing this thanks to the ease of making price comparisons from mobile apps.

Based on a survey of 1,000 smartphone owners, researchers found that there has been a 156 percent jump with consumers who purchased a product from a competitor while in a retail store.

Furthermore, 44 percent of consumers are said to practice showrooming "frequently," while at least 36 percent utse their mobile devices as aides when shopping in stores than compared to two years ago.

At first glance, this might spell doom for brick-and-mortar retailers. However, there are some lessons to be learned and opportunities to be realized if they act quickly.

Vibes co-founder and CEO Jack Philbin suggested in the report that retailers could tap into another major trend going on in mobile tech: personalization.

The antidote to showrooming is creating contextually relevant and personalized mobile experiences that motivate and influence consumers to take notice and make purchases. If retailers don’t establish personalized mobile strategies, they’ll increasingly face unengaged consumers who will continue to browse in-store and buy online from competitors.

Given that it's already October, retailers would be wise to jump on mobile trends such as targeted ads based on location and personalized offers -- most of which don't seem to be slowing down in popularity just yet.

Topics: E-Commerce, Apps, Mobility, Tech Industry, Social Enterprise

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

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New Dell service aims to mainstream desktop virtualization projects

Summary: The 360 Integrated Design approach focuses on back-end integration changes that are integral to successful virtual desktop infrastructure rollouts.

As more desktop virtualization solutions (DVS) projects move (or attempt to move) from pilot phase into full-fledged deployments, the Dell services team is introducing an integrated design approach that it believes will help more of them arrive successfully.

The service, called DVS 360 Integrated Design (or 360 Integrated Design), focuses on the work that organizations need to do behind the scenes with existing infrastructure to better integrate virtual desktop infrastructure with existing systems and processes, said Jefferson Raley, porfolio director with the Dell End-User Computing Strategic Consulting Practice. 

"When customers adopt desktop virtualization, they know they need servers, networking gear and storage to make this work," Raley said. "Where some have been blind, however, is when it comes to considering the integration changes that need to work in order to make desktop virtualization work." Those considerations include:

Active Directory design changes or modificationsThe effect on printing processesThe implications of persistent virtual machines across an enterprise infrastructureCertificatesUser data storage policitesApplication compatibilityApplication entitlementNetwork capacity and bandwidthVideo and audio streamingWeb accessOperating sytem and application licensing policiesUSB connections and lock-down measuresData migration

The Dell 360 Integrated Design approach is a roadmap methodology designed to "reveal the blind spots" that might exist within an organization. "The reason we built this service is because we saw a lot of implementations that weren't going that well," Raley said.

Over a period of approximately eight weeks (depending on the size of the company), the Dell services team gathers a comprehensive series of information from desktops targeted for virtualization and then uses that information to create an integration plan focused on the foundational changes that might be necessary within existing environments.

The service is just getting off the ground: so far, Dell has worked closely with one major automotive company to help get its desktop virtualization effort back on track, Raley said. 

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist specializing in transformative technology and innovation