ROPO

The ROPO effect: Research Online Purchase Offline

ROPO is in short the phrase “Research Online Purchase Offline”. It is a well-known term for retail companies whose stores are both physical and online.

The ROPO effect describes the situation when potential customers start an online journey, but they eventually purchase offline, in the physical store. For example, customers do research for a specific product or service on the internet and after gathering enough information they buy it in the physical store.

Before the internet was used much in the retail marketplace, customers used to find out about products through salespeople mainly in local, brick-and-mortar stores. Before the booming of online shopping, physical stores were the main place of purchases. Nowadays, though, the vast majority of consumers searches online for official product information published by the sellers. In some cases, they are even primarily interested in other people’s reviews in social media for example.

In this way, they usually form a well rounded view for a brand or a specific product and then they visit the physical store to buy. By making the final purchase in the physical store, they complete their “journey” offline.

For certain product categories, the ropo effect is extremely common. Some good examples are expensive products, such as furniture that people want to feel before they buy it. Other examples are the fashion and beauty industries. In all previous cases, the “touch-and-feel” characteristics of the items play a crucial role for potential customers before they purchase them.

As a result, the tracking and measurement of the ropo effect with metrics - suitable for each company - is highly important. In this way, the latter will be able to effectively set their marketing, advertising and pricing strategies.

Some ways to measure the ropo effect of your business are gps tracking, comparison of online and offline data, statistical analysis, soft conversions and in-store surveys.

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