The Long and Winding ‘Online’ Purchase Process
Yesterday Yahoo! released yet another very interesting piece of research about the increasingly complex "purchase funnel" — or maybe it's not increasingly complex; perhaps they're just making the process more transparent. The report says there is no “funnel,” there’s a complex segmentation of consumers and Internet usage, tied to consideration around the particular product. Here's the iMedia write up of the report's top-level findings and here's ClickZ's.
From the iMedia summary:
Consumers say the internet is the most trusted shopping information source (54 percent), followed by magazines (34 percent) and TV (23 percent), according to the study. The study also found that communal shopping online helped consumers learn more about a product. Findings showed that 25 percent of people have posted reviews of products or services online, providing a service to other shoppers.
As mentioned, the study segmented purchases and purchasers by consideration level and suggests the Internet can potentially have the greatest influence over the highest consideration purchases. From the ClickZ article:
The study breaks purchase paths into four categories: quick paths, winding paths, long paths and long and winding paths. Quick paths are characterized by little research and are used for impulse buys or routine consumer packaged goods purchases. A winding path indicates cross-channel comparison shopping, such as for retail goods. The long path often takes place in just one channel, but is lengthy because the consumer is waiting for an event such as a price drop or the availability of a new model.
The most involved path, and the one where marketers have the most room to convert in-market consumers, is called the long and winding path. Shoppers' paths usually fall into this category when they're seeking big-ticket items like automobiles and financial services. "Consumers of these products are the hungriest for information," the study said.
Here's more on the study from the press release.
