The feedback of other shoppers is becoming a critical part of how shoppers compare and buy, with the desire to know what others experience with stores and products having doubled in importance among users of comparison shopping engines over the past four years, according to a survey by BizRate Research, a division of comparison shopping engine Shopzilla. Meanwhile, price as a factor, though still important, has declined.
In the survey of nearly 2,000 online shoppers conducted early this year, 49% of shoppers said price was most important to them when comparison shopping, a decrease from the 58% who said so when Shopzilla did the same survey in 2003. Conversely, only 7% of shoppers surveyed in 2003 said customer feedback was the most important factor when comparison shopping, in contrast to the 18% who said so in the 2007 survey. That means price has dropped in importance over the past four years by 9%, while customer feedback had gained in importance by 11%, according to BizRate.
“Consumers still love to price comparison shop, but are wary of deals that are too good to be true and turn to fellow shoppers to make their decisions,” says Helen Malani, chief shopping expert at Shopzilla. In a related study from BizRate, 81% of online shoppers said they believed customer satisfaction ratings are “quite a bit” or extremely” important when shopping online.
In other findings relating to comparison shopping, BizRate determined that shoppers are loyal to retailers only to a point, with 46% not willing to pay more than the desired price to purchase from a preferred merchant. Nearly 74% of consumers said they find better deals online than offline. Consumers were most interested in finding deals or sales on clothes, lingerie and socks, cited by 55% of those surveyed; books, cited by 48%; movies, cited by 29%; digital cameras and cameras, cited by 29%; computer software, cited by 28%, and computer hardware, cited by 27%.
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