Over half of online buyers (54%) started their shopping at a shopping search engine or aggregator site while just 46% started at a merchant site, according to a recent March 2004 study of over 3,800 online buyers by shopping search and comparison site BizRate.com. In just 15 months, online consumer behavior has shifted by 8 percentage points, tipping the balance in favor of aggregators for shopping searches.
By contrast, consumers typing in a merchant’s URL had accounted for 54% of sales leads in a prior study of over 4,200 online buyers conducted in December, 2002. In that study, aggregators, which include comparison shopping sites, search engines, shopping portals and auction sites, had accounted for only 46% of sales leads.
The comparison shopping sites and shopping search engines provide product prices from many merchants. “The Internet created price competition which consumers love,” Davis continued. “But merchants also love the role search engines and comparison sites have played in their businesses. The shopping search engines draw millions of customers to their sites. To get this same shopping traffic, individual retailers would have to spend millions. But instead they save marketing expense and get great volumes of leads from the aggregators.”
