A showroom is a place where you go to look at stuff and think about buying it, but it may not necessarily be in stock or even available. In the e-commerce era, it has a slightly different meaning: the term “showrooming” means visiting a nearby store to check out an item in person, then buying that item online from a different company.

Retailers, as you can imagine, aren’t fans of the practice. The near-term future of electronics chain Best Buy depends on convincing Americans that their stores can serve purposes other than “Newegg showroom.”

With that in mind, reader Paul thought that this promotional e-mail he received from Best Buy was kind of strange.

Is it such a great idea for a company that’s still fighting showrooming to actually advertise itself as a showroom? Tipster Paul said that it was like a real-life version of the Best Buy slogan featured in one of our posts from last week, 11 Company Slogans That Say What We Know To Be The Real Truth.

Maybe this isn’t their entire holiday marketing campaign: it could be just one little graphic on one e-mail sent to Best Buy’s rewards program members: people who have made purchases in the store before and probably will do so again. If Best Buy stores became a showroom for BestBuy.com, that might actually work out.

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