I like cameras and let’s pretend I want a new mirrorless full-frame camera from Sony. A decade ago, I'd walk into a shop, hold a few models, ask a salesperson random questions (to pretend I know my stuff), and buy the one that felt right and probably paying cash. Today, I watch a YouTube review, check spec-comparison sites, read a Reddit thread on sensor noise — and click "buy with installments" before ever touching the thing.
That shift has two names:
Showrooming: test in a physical store, buy online.
Webrooming: research online, buy in store. Both are common for electronics — often for the same purchase.
The global picture
A JRNI survey of 2,000 US/UK shoppers found 74% of consumers webroom, and 57% showroom — both most common for electronics, clothing and household items. Consumer electronics buyers also take roughly twice as long to decide as fashion shoppers, meaning more touchpoints and more chances for a competitor to change their mind mid-journey. Online sales sit at around 16% of total category revenue, with third-party marketplaces (Amazon chief among them) holding the largest single share — though brand-owned websites are growing faster than marketplace sales as brands try to reclaim the relationship with the buyer.
Showrooming & Webrooming
Shooping habits
Large online shopper base
Y en España? (and in Spain?)
Spain's online shopper base is large and growing: 77% of Spaniards now shop online (~27 million people), spending an average of €3,762/year, up 13.8% year-on-year.
Showrooming specifically looks different here. An IBM study found it represents only about 4% of all Spanish purchases (vs. a 6% global average) — yet it's behind roughly 43% of all online sales. From a smaller base, it punches well above its weight. The typical Spanish showroomer: male, 18–34, medium-to-high income, buying mainly luxury goods, consumer electronics, kids' fashion, footwear and home décor — a profile academic research confirms, naming electronics and textiles as the categories where showrooming happens most.
Two more numbers worth keeping: 25% of Spanish showroomers walk into the store intending to buy there — the sale isn't lost by default, it's lost to a better offer found in the moment. And two-thirds of Spanish online shoppers buy through multichannel retailers, not pure online-only players.
(Worth flagging: Spain-specific showrooming research is thinner than the general e-commerce data — the IBM figures come from a widely-cited but not-recently-repeated study. Treat them as directionally solid, not exact to the decimal.)
What it means for a brand
If the "testing" moment now happens on a screen, that's where the sale is won or lost — not the checkout page.
Reviewer and creator content matters more than product photography. The comparison video someone watches is doing the job the in-store demo used to do.
Retail and digital are one journey, not competing channels. Pushing customers only toward Amazon (or similar) hands away the ability to shape the research phase entirely.
Owning the research moment — search results, spec pages, comparison content — is now as valuable as owning shelf space used to be.
The showroom didn't disappear. It's now being complemented by the digital world.
Sources and methodology:
JRNI/Chain Store Age
Promodo Consumer Electronics eCommerce 2026
ONTSI/Red.es "Compras online en España 2025"
IBM España, "De las transacciones a las relaciones" (via Emprendedores.es, ReasonWhy.es)
Universidad de Zaragoza, "Comportamiento de compra multicanal, el efecto Showrooming"
