Compete Blog: How Well Do Merchants Understand Consumers' Digital Paths to Purchase?
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article from the Compete Blog. Compete Inc. is a web analytics company that focuses on understanding how consumers use the internet.
A study from GroupMNext and Compete exploring what role digital media plays in the path to purchase has identified six distinct segments of online consumers.
Ranked by size, the digital shopper segments, as identified by GroupM Next, are:
Basic Digital Consumers: Not highly digital users. They are comfortable with internet shopping and research, but are not mobile or social and have the second-highest likelihood of buying offline.
Retail Scouts: Have short journeys and prefer retail sites to brand sites. They use mobile, but are twice as likely to use it in the home as out. They are comfortable buying online but did not express a preference between online and offline.
Brand Scouts: A spiritual partner to the Retail Scouts except, instead of having a favorite retailer, they have a favorite brand. When asked, 72 percent said they start their journey with a brand in mind.
Digitally Driven Segment: Use every digital tool at their disposal. They use social and mobile more than any other segment, value convenience above all, and do everything in their power to avoid physically going to a store. The Digitally Driven are expected to become the dominant segment of consumers within five years.
Calculated Shoppers: These shoppers seem to know they are going to make a purchase, but they are deciding which brand to choose. They are similar to the Digitally Driven Segment, but have no urgency to their purchase and they're willing to take the time to get the best deal.
External Shoppers: These are non-mobile shoppers. They want the answers to "Should I buy?," "What do I buy?" and "What brand do I buy?" — all at the same time. They have no urgency to make a purchase and do their research on desktop and laptop computers.
The survey also explored Amazon's influence on consumers' digital paths to purchase. Not surprisingly, the e-tail giant was found to exert a significant influence on buying behavior.
- Thirty-seven percent of the time Amazon starts a path that ends somewhere else;
- Thirty-five percent of the time the purchase path ends at Amazon;
- Twenty-two percent of the time the path starts and ends somewhere else, but Amazon is used in the middle;
- Six percent of the time Amazon is the only destination in the path.
What does this all mean for digital marketers?
- Digital consumers can't all be treated the same. Pathways will change over time and new ones are likely to develop.
- The consumer's journey itself is the deciding factor in a purchase, as opposed to, for example, the ticket price of the item.
- With the shift to mobile devices and tablets, an emerging power-shopping class is not behaving like anything seen before.
- Purchase pathways differentiate with behavioral factors, not necessarily demographics.