Source: Amazon.com
MarketingCharts staff
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-to-minute data and research to marketers.
According to a new survey, 55 percent of U.S. consumers begin an online product search on Amazon.com, up from 44 percent at the same time last year.
That compares to 28 percent who will do so using a search engine (versus 34 percent last year) and 16 percent using a retailer’s site (down from 21 percent in 2015), according to BloomReach’s “State of Amazon 2016.”
Amazon’s dominance in product search extends to mobile devices: half of the respondents said they start product searches on mobile devices on Amazon’s mobile site or app. Search engines fare slightly better on mobile, with 34 percent starting their search on one.
Meanwhile, Amazon also gains a slight edge as a go-to for comparison shopping. Nine in 10 respondents comparison shop on Amazon even if they find a product they want on a retailer’s site, with almost eight in 10 of these comparison shoppers doing this often or always. Going the other way, seven in 10 check retailers even when they found what they want on Amazon and, of these, 52 percent do so often or always.
A third of the respondents listed Amazon’s site experience as the main reason they choose Amazon over other retailers. More than half distinguished Amazon’s site search and product-filtering capabilities as superior. While 30 percent of consumers reported having left Amazon for another retailer’s site after having a poor site experience, almost twice as many (58 percent) have done the opposite, leaving a retailer’s site for Amazon after a poor site experience.
Retailers may want to take a closer look at personalization as a means to entice shoppers, according to the BloomReach survey, as only one in three feel that Amazon’s site personalization and product recommendations are superior. Further, 41 percent said that better personalization would make them more likely to buy from a retailer over Amazon.