63% of people* have used the internet in the last month to “research a product or service before buying it” (this from last month’s TNS Digital World, Digital Life survey of 27,522 people across the world). You’ll recall that this measure is one of my Top 10 measures (see November 18th 2008 post). I’m calling this “percentage of people who research online before buying offline” the “PreBuy Research” measure.
(* people refers to the 27,522 Universe polled by TNS – it is a fairly active online community in itself by virtue of the fact that its members take part in online surveys)
My number for UK PreBuy Researchers was 86% “the number of shoppers who will research online before buying in-store”. This is a UK number from the IMRG and their “e-Customer Service Index”.
[Let's split hairs for a moment - TNS and IMRG use different universes: the TNS number is "percentage of an online audience who participated in an online survey who said that they researched a product or service online before buying" and the IMRG number is "percentage of shoppers who had bought offline who had researched a product or service online before buying"]
More anecdotals from TNS in this vein:
- 73% (of survey respondents) compare prices on white goods
- well over two thirds (of survey respondents) compare prices on mobile phones, cars and televisions/DVD players
- approximately 1 in 10 (of survey respondents) discussed their purchases with others as sought professional advice
- well over half (of survey respondents) across all product categories researched online the product that they eventually bought.
- 85% (of survey respondents) who were car buyers did their research online
- 75% (of survey respondents) who were PC purchasers did their research online
