In almost any work from home you are engaging with like affiliate marketing, selling on eBay or running your own website, it is important to understand as much as possible the consumers shopping habits dynamic, so we could optimize our online business accordingly.
An excellent comprehensive research has been published lately by the social commerce solutions company PowerReviews, that examined the consumers shopping research behavior and its implications on their eventual actions in 2011. 1,004 adults (98% from the ages 25-65) that shopped online at least 4 times in the last year have participated in the research. Let’s go through the research findings:
Researching More For Products Online
Half of the participants have stated that they research for products online at least for 75% of their overall shopping and about 80% of the participants are researching at least for half of their overall shopping. This is a big increase compared to 2010 where only half of the participants back then, have researched for at least 50% of their overall shopping.
Spending Less Time Researching
Although the consumers are researching for more of their shopping online, they spend less time for each research. While in 2010, 60% of the consumers spent a week or more to research for a product, in 2011 only 37% spent as much time and the big majority (63%) spent up to a few days researching.
Beginning The Shopping Process In Search Engines
44% of the consumers have begun their shopping process by looking at the top results in search engines. 33% have begun in the retail site that sells the product they need and 20% started in the product manufacturer site itself. Only 3% have begun the process in social networks like Facebook or Twitter.
Barely Using Social Networks For Research
71% of the consumers are barely using social networks for products research- 49% never and 22% rarely look for information in the social media. Only 16% are using often or always social networks for research.
Customer Reviews And Q&A Have The Biggest Buying Impact
The participants ranked which social sources had the biggest impact on their buying behavior. Customer reviews (59%) and Q&A (42%) sources ranked as the top impacting social sources. Again, social networking services ranked very low. Here’s the full list:
