Last month Matt posted a discussion on the buying cycle, and how the behaviour model of ROBO (Research Online, Buy Offline) doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. He introduced an expanded concept, that of ROTOBO (Research Online, Touch Offline, Buy Online) to better describe the more complex process that shoppers go through.

What I’m beginning to notice is another type of behaviour, one that would need to be mapped in a less black-and-white way. The basics are that Researching and Buying are carried out either online or offline, and that Touching is always an offline activity. My suggestion is that there is no compelling way to map the process to cover all bases adequately, or that Touching is a solely offline activity.

The take-away from this is that the model with which you map your customer’s behaviour should be only dictated by your customers, rather than something that’s just easy to describe. This means that the strategies and techniques you employ and fund, should be dictated by measured and quantifiable factors.

If you have a shop where footfall is high and staff are busy with customers, but your daily take doesn’t reflect that, have a look at your online sales. If your online sales are high but average pageviews are rock bottom this may suggest that your customers could be researching and touching offline multiple times, then buying online.

There’s also the variable where local availability of an item means that your customer may purchase something online so they can scope it out, then return it for full refund before they go into town to buy it. This kind of scenario occurs with the largest UK domestic electricals retailers, maybe not in large numbers but probably enough instances to justify a dedicated strategy for these types of buyers.

There are probably loads of variables, many more than you might first assume.

Retail is tough at the moment, but by revi

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