Brick-and-mortar merchants compete with online retailers he Wal-Mart logo is pictured on cash registers at a new store in Chicago this year: brick-and-mortar merchants such as Wal-Mart will do everything in their power to compete with online retailers such as Amazon. com this holiday season. As retailers gear up for the holiday shopping sea- son, analysts expect brick-and-mor- tar merchants to deploy a variety of tactics to help them compete with online-only companies like Amazon. com. The result will be a more com- plex landscape for retailers and their customers, ‘Shoppers can expect to see promo- tions that can be redeemed only on- line or only in-store, price-matching and location-based mobile discounts. Increasingly, stores blur the line between online and in-store shop- ping with same-day delivery, and other similar services. Companies still want to get people in the physi- cal stores, because stores are de- signed to prompt impulse purchases, “When consumers go into the store they spend more, on average,” said Andrea Woroch, a retail consultant. “Retailers lay out their stores in such a fashion to capture consumers’ at- tention and hopefully get them to spend more than they intended to.” Merchants’ biggest challenge used tobe getting people inside the store. But now when customers check pric- esand online reviews while standing in front of the product, even getting them inside the store doesn’t indi- cate a likely sale. While shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, an increas- ing number of consumers are using their smartphones to compare prices. Since shoppers are going to be pull- ing out their smartphones to price- compare anyway, retailers are getting smart by using those devices to offer them deals they can only get while in the store, Woroch also predicts shop- pers can expect to see more free ship- ping offers this year with lower mini- mum purchase thresholds, or free expedited shipping for bigger orders. Also likely to become more prevalent, she said, are free returns or in-store returns.“It's getting people into the store, so if they were just planning to return it and get their money back . maybe something will catch their eye,” she said. “It gives them the op- portunity to capture some more sales there. As well, it’s a convenience to the consumer.” Balancing physical store and online transactions to keep one from canni- balizing the other will be a challenge, although analysts say having both channels available can represent a significant asset for retailers, pro- vided they combine the two correctly. Friday, October 19, 2012 NBCNEWS