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Most Consumers Prefer In-Store Shopping For Footwear And Apparel Over Online

What and how people shop online is fundamentally different from how and what they shop in-store. It has been found that consumers prefer to shop footwear and apparel in-store instead of online. The consumers who prefer online-only shopping for footwear and apparel is significantly slim while a growing number of consumers said they would like to purchase these items online if there is an in-store pickup option. This has a huge implication for digital sellers.

According to a new research by Body Labs, shopping for clothes and shoes is still primarily a brick-and-mortar store thing for both male and female shoppers. Consumers prefer in-store shopping for footwear and apparel over online.

Body Labs 2016 retail survey, conducted among 1130 internet users in the US, examined about retail purchasing behaviors of consumers. 50% of the male respondents said they only shop for footwear in-store. Top of that, a quarter more said they prefer to shop for shoes in-store instead of online, which means 69% of male shoppers primarily relied on brick-and-mortar outlets for their footwear shopping.

On the other hand, female shoppers prefer in-store shopping for footwear even more. More than a third of female respondents said they only shop in-store for footwear and some 29% said they shop digitally less than in-store. It means 65% of female internet users prefer to buy footwear from a brick-and-mortar outlet.

For apparel, most internet users surveyed said they prefer or primarily rely on brick-and-mortar store instead of online. 63% of men shopped for apparel did so mostly from physical stores with occasional online experience, while 28% never shopped for apparel digitally.

Compared to that, women skewed a little more towards online for apparel shopping. 55% of women respondents relied mostly on physical stores for clothing shopping while occasionally going digital. Contrary, 21% of respondents shopped for clothing only in physical stores.

Comparatively, digital only shoppers are rare. Only a meager 4% of male and 3% of female internet users surveyed shopped for these items, clothing and shoes only via digital.

Mohammad Ruhul Kader is a Dhaka-based entrepreneur and writer. He founded Future Startup, a digital publication covering the startup and technology scene in Dhaka with an ambition to transform Bangladesh through entrepreneurship and innovation. He writes about internet business, strategy, technology, and society. He is the author of Rethinking Failure. His writings have been published in almost all major national dailies in Bangladesh including DT, FE, etc. Prior to FS, he worked for a local conglomerate where he helped start a social enterprise. Ruhul is a 2022 winner of Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He can be reached at ruhul@futurestartup.com

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