Research online, purchase offline (ROPO) (also research online, buy offline, online-to-store or webrooming), is a modern trend in buying behaviour where customers research relevant product information to qualify their buying decision, before they actually decide to buy their favourite product in the local store.
The ROPO effect allows the advertiser to calculate their overall
return on investment
Return on investment (ROI) or return on costs (ROC) is a ratio between net income (over a period) and investment (costs resulting from an investment of some resources at a point in time). A high ROI means the investment's gains compare favourably ...
(ROI) more precisely, by multiplying their online sales with the O2S-factor. The result is the offline revenue which is influenced by the
Online marketing investments. ROPO is often equated with
Click and Collect, that is, the process of online reservation and subsequent pick-up of the product at the store. Both are segments of
Multichannel marketing. According to a 2011 Google report 80 percent of all offline buyers research online, before they buy a product in a local store.
[Research Online Purchase Offline. Die Bedeutung des Internet im Kaufentscheidungsprozess.](_blank)
{{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140405044849/http://full-value-of-search.de/pdf/Metaanalyse%20ROPO%20-%20Research%20Online%20Purchase%20Offline%20im%20Branchenvergleich_komplett.pdf?1301054190 , date=2014-04-05 , Google report, 2011. Accessed in February 2014. Furthermore, in high item value industries ROPO already makes a significant share of total sales. This was also acknowledged by an analysis of the German retail association and
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four account ...
.
[Entwicklung des Online-Handels in Deutschland. Analyse der Branchensektoren.](_blank)
German retail association/PwC report, 2013. Accessed in February 2013
Its opposite is
showrooming
Showrooming is the practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick-and-mortar retail store or other offline setting, and then buying it online, sometimes at a lower price. Online stores often offer lower prices than their brick and mortar ...
: researching a product in a physical store before buying it online.
External links
Business models