Over 50% of internet users research online before making a product purchase: Kantar study

With growing internet penetration across India, the role of digital in our lives has evolved over the years. This has been further accelerated in the last 1.5 years with the increased stay-at-home phenomenon. The digital touchpoints have changed the way we consume news, play games, or interact with friends. The Indian consumer, who has traditionally relied on friends and family reviews, has now moved online to discover and research products as well. A recently concluded study by Kantar and Amazon Advertising among 5,000+ internet users across 37 towns in India found that online product research is playing a crucial role in the decision journey.

Key findings of the study

1. Online research has become an integral part of the decision journey

The study found that online touchpoints are as important as offline touchpoints among Indian consumers before they make a purchase decision. This adoption of digital for research has penetrated across towns, age groups, and socio-economic segments within India. Online research has often been linked to a phenomenon among online shoppers and high-value products. However, the study concluded that it is widely prevalent among offline shoppers and is common across product categories.

2. Amazon is a popular destination for product research

Amazon.in has emerged as a go-to website for product discovery with nearly 73% of all online researchers accessing it for their product research needs, as per the study. Also, the acceptance of Amazon as a product research destination is democratically spread across Indian geographies, age groups and NCCS consumer segments.

3. Amazon audience’s distinct profile and behavior

Consumers using Amazon for product research/purchase show distinct characteristics as compared to the average internet population in India. According to the study, Amazon audiences are not only more affluent as compared to the average internet audience in India, it was noted that they are also slightly younger, more educated and well-employed. Amazon users also demonstrate a higher consumption likelihood for discretionary products, affinity towards premium brands/products, and unique lifestyle preference across themes such as health and wellness, travel & leisure, and adoption of new technology/trends.

Download a copy of the report here to know more.

Implications for marketers

We connected with a few agency and brand leaders to understand the implications of this study for marketers:

“Time spent online across age groups and platforms has gone up by 30-60% during the pandemic. This has increased the influence digital has on the consumer journey. We have observed that the time taken to purchase in some categories have gone up significantly there increasing emphasis on the middle and bottom funnel. At the same time, marketplaces like Amazon have become the go-to destination for product research. As a result, funds are also following this trend as more and more marketing spends are moving towards the middle and bottom funnel.” – Vishal Jacob, Chief  Digital Officer, Wavemaker.

“In the last 2 years, we have observed a shift in consumer behavior, as there is a drive towards conscious consumption. Consumers are becoming a lot more conscious around what they spend on. Consumers are, hence, doing a lot more research before making a purchase and there is a clear shift towards health & hygiene.”–Nikhil Rastogi, Marketing Director & E-Commerce Business Head, Dyson.

Most marketers have realigned their media strategies in the last year and are looking at better mechanisms and touchpoints to reach the ‘right’ audiences for delivering their brand message. Amazon Advertising helps brands across categories that are listed on amazon.in (e.g. FMCG) and those who are not (e.g. BFSI) reach relevant audiences at key moments in their decision journey to build awareness, drive consideration and performance. Brands can reach deterministically defined audience cohorts through in-stream programmatic video and Fire TV/IMDb to build awareness. ‘High intent’ audiences can be engaged within the amazon search environment through Sponsored ads and Stores to drive performance. Further, these audiences can be engaged with remarketing through display ads on third party inventory to amplify performance.

To know more, reach out to the Amazon Advertising team here.

This is a partner content article in association with exchange4media