InformationWeek

By merging their physical and virtual sales channels, retailers hope shoppers will never leave a store without making a purchase because items they wanted weren't on the shelves. David Cooperstein, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, says the Web's success as a sales channel has convinced retailers that they can use it to boost in-store sales. "There are a lot of companies starting to do brick-and-mortar high-tech makeovers" by bringing Web technology into stores, he says. "It's the next step in channel synchronization."

Sears expects to roll out its first Web kiosks in Michigan and Connecticut stores in three to six months. In-store kiosks will access items in Sears' online catalog, which offers more than 4 million items. "The tendency is to have some sort of convergence between the physical and virtual stores," says Pete Rector, director of vendor management at Sears. "We want customers to have what we call 'any cubed'-order any time, from anywhere, and get it any way they want it."

Borders is pursuing a similar convergence strategy by testing a handful of kiosks that give shoppers access to inventory in that particular outlet. It will introduce the terminals at an unspecified number of locations nationwide by year's end. Eventually, the terminals will be connected to Borders' central inventory database so every book it holds will be available at all of its stores, says Rick Vanzura, president of Internet and fulfillment services. "We're building interfaces between store systems and the back end," he says. The company is preparing for a surge in electronic orders by beefing up its custom middleware and upgrading its IBM Net.commerce storefront software.