As described in an article by reporter Amy Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal, showrooming is "when shoppers come into a store to see a product in person, only to buy it from a rival online, frequently at a lower price."

Say a merchant owns a retail store -- a brick-and-mortar store, on a city street. He or she hires staff, pays rent, writes checks for electricity and telephone service, pays for janitorial work, pays real estate and sales taxes, invests heavily in merchandise.

And hopes against hope that customers will come in, look around and buy something. This is how the retail sales business has always worked.

But in recent years, as online companies without a single physical store have risen to prominence, something new has occurred.

People will come into stores, look around, stop at items they particularly like -- and instead of carrying them to the cash register, will take photos of them, or type a description into their smartphones.

Then, in many cases, they will go home, enter the product into a search engine and find some online-only merchant -- a merchant who has no real-life stores -- who is selling the item for less money.

A tap of the "Enter" key, a few keystrokes to provide credit card information, and the item -- the item the person has examined and liked in the brick-and-mortar store -- is on its way to the buyer's home.

It's all so effortless.

The online merchant wins. The purchaser wins.

Who loses?