Dive Summary:

• The theme-based, photo-sharing website Pinterest is helping drive shoppers into brick-and-mortar stores to purchase retail items they interact with on the site in a phenomenon known as “reverse showrooming.”
• A recent study released by Vision Critical and highlighted by the Harvard Business Review found that 21% of all Pinterest users purchased retail items in-store after being introduced to them through Pinterest.
• Some experts suggest this is an indication that social media marketing is paying off for retail and could help serve as a counter-balance to the recent shopping trend known as “showrooming,” where consumers interact with merchandise in-store to compare prices, but often purchase from an online vendor instead.

From the article:

Vision Critical found that 50% of the items caught users' attention while they were casually browsing Pinterest itself (24% on a stranger's boards, 19% on a friend's, and 7% on a retailer's). Another 10% came from Pinterest searches. These numbers are a testament to Pinterest's power as a kind of user-generated digital retail catalog that shoppers flip through for ideas.