Online media continue to play a major role in consumers’ purchase decisions, whether items or services are bought online, over the phone, or in a store or other physical location, according to DoubleClick Inc.’s third annual Touchpoints survey.
Individual Internet marketing channels such as web ads, search engines, e-mail programs, and web sites outrank salespeople, word of mouth, in-store promotions and TV ads in select product categories—travel, banking and automotive. But combined, Internet media outrank the importance of other marketing vehicles in almost every product category, DoubleClick says.
Categories included automotive, consumer electronics, credit cards and banking, home improvement products, investments and mortgages, movies, personal/home care, prescription drugs, telecom services and travel.
In eight out of ten product/service categories, consumers cited official company web sites of the manufacturer or primary service provider as among the top four resources for researching an eventual purchase, according to the Touchpoint survey.
“The Internet has really revolutionized the way that companies can communicate information about products to consumers, and how consumers can find information directly from manufacturers and other sources,” says Rick Bruner, DoubleClick’s director of research.
The role of online media in purchase decisions was most evident in the travel sector, DoubleClick says. 67% of consumers who bought a travel service in the past six months said they learned of the fare or promotion via an Internet vehicle, including online travel web sites (20%), travel company web sites (18%), search engines (11%) and e-mail opt in (10%).
Online media most influenced consumers’ purchase decisions in categories that rely heavily on Internet marketing, such as travel and investment and financial services. But Bruner says he expects online marketing to become more influential in the other categories as well. “As advertisers spend more money in some of these product categories and shift more of their advertising budget on to the Internet, we’ll see larger numbers of people referring to Internet ads in categories, such as consumer packaged goods,” he says.
DoubleClick based the Touchpoint report on a web survey of 2,110 U.S. adults aged 18 and older in December 2004.
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