Online shoppers spend more and more time researching and comparing products from different vendors, always on the hunt for the best deal. While usually the research begins with a search engine, ultimately it is customer opinions (reviews) which have the greatest influence on purchasing decisions. Mobile phones are primarily used to compare prices. This is the latest excerpt from "The Social Shopping Study 2011" by The E-tailing Group and Power Reviews, which is offered for free download here (pdf, in English).
Due to the growing momentum in the e-commerce sector, which has been driven primarily by m-commerce and social media, dealers must increasingly focus on providing the customers with as much information over as many channels as possible. Every second online shopper spends at least 75% of their "shopping time" with researches online, 15% even up to 90%.
44% initiate their researches with a search engine, while only 1% commence by tweeting a relevant question on Twitter.
59% of Internet searchers rely on customer reviews in order to make their decision. The respondent shoppers prefered to read written product reviews on Amazon.com, shown by this study to be the true authority in this field. Once the product is purchased, 70% of participants happy to leave a "rating" themselves. The Facebook "Like" and "Share" buttons are also often used, but still do not have the same reach.