Online product merchandising
Education and research are the keys to success.
In today's competitive online retailing environment, manufacturers and retailers alike run the risk of getting lost in the crowd. With a multitude of purchase options and price comparison tools, differentiating your product or service and building ongoing customer loyalty are proving to be elusive tasks with online consumers. However, as evidenced by the growing trend of online consumers using the Internet as their primary source for researching products and services, it's becoming increasingly clear that the web sites and/or brands that can better educate and inform their potential customers are the ones that will stand apart.
To confront this challenge, many commerce sites are seeking to provide a richer, deeper, and more informative shopping experience than the typical online "catalog" experience today. While manufacturers typically (and understandably) offer the most in-depth source of information regarding a product or service, most consumers will turn to a channel partner's web site first when researching online product information, as evidenced by a recent study.
Information sources
Which of the following information sources do you use when researching a product online?
Base: North American online consumers (multiple responses accepted)
Source: Forrester, Shop.org 2005
Additionally, for many online retailers, this research process is increasingly translating into offline, or in-store, purchases as opposed to online sales. A recent Jupiter Research study found that the impact of online research on offline sales will grow from 18-percent of all U.S. retail spending in 2004 to 34-percent of all U.S. retail spending in 2008 ($680 billion).1 Online retailers that fail to recognize this trend risk losing a significant part of their overall sales to those that do.
1 Source: Jupiter Research Online Influence Model, October 2003 (U.S. Only)