(By Balachander) Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and Target (NYSE: TGT) face some of the strongest threats of showrooming from Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) customers, but other retailers are at an even greater risk, a study has showed.
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) was the relative "safest" of the three retailers with showroomers 10% and 15% less likely to visit Walmart when compared to Target and Best Buy, location analytics company Placed said.
The Placed study found that showroomers were 20 percent more likely to visit Best Buy and 15 percent more likely to visit Target than than average, but Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY), PetSmart (NASDAQ: PETM) and Toys ‘R' Us all face greater risk.
Bed Bath & Beyond ranked as the most at-risk retailer with showroomers 27 percent more likely to visit the home goods retailer, while Petsmart had a 25 percent risk.
"Amazon was the clear winner in e-commerce 1.0, and unless brick-and-mortar retailers shift from reactive to proactive, Amazon will win e-commerce 2.0 on the backs of offline retailers," Placed CEO David Shim said. "All the attention to date has been on Target and Best Buy as the early victims of showrooming, but significantly more retailers are at risk."
Shim added that retailers need to know that it is not a question of if or when showrooming will impact their business, as an aisle to Amazon is already in their store.
Amazon Price Check app users were 53 percent more likely to visit T.J. Maxx than the average consumer, the study found.
The study is based on 14,925 survey respondents in the U.S. along with the direct measurement of nearly 1 billion U.S. location data points during January 2013.