E-marketer published a report today entitled Where are all the online shoppers going? in which they estimate that the online retail market will continue growing at a 3% compound annual growth rate (in the US at least) till 2011, compared with 8% from 2003 to 2005:
The reason…
“More so than ever, consumers are using the Web as a product research tool, regardless of whether a purchase takes place on a Web site or in a store.” says Jeffery Graw, eMarketer Senior Analyst in E-Commerce
This is a fact we knew about from the old Kelkoo days, where lots of people would use the comparison tool to find the best prices and then either ring up the merchant directly or go and pick it up from the store (brandishing the online price in front of them). Of course, that meant no commission for Kelkoo even though they had directly contributed to the sale. We spent ages trying to work out how you could track that and extract some value.
Fundamentally, the web is a fantastic research tool for finding product advice and recommendations – it’s just that getting those sources in one place and particularly from those sites, people, or experts that you trust the most – is still lacking. Brands have a lot of benefit from this process too – what better time to advertise your new product range and features than when someone is researching the space and is most likely to be influenceable.
In fact, this is exactly how I bought my flat screen TV over a year ago now. I was researching them on the web to see what was on offer until I came across an advert for the Philip’s Ambilight system and was hooked. Read some reviews, narrowed it down to the screen size I wanted, then hunted for the best price. At that point I headed down Tottenham Court Road brandishing my price list and got them to match it and deliver it in the next few days.
So back to the report, I agree that comparing prices and actually then buying online will always be limited due to offline channels, but researching on the web will only improve and keep growing for many years to come..
