At least 47 percent of shoppers start their product search on marketplaces. The share of shoppers doing that is even higher in the United Kingdom, with 54 percent. This means that marketplaces are more often used to find products than search engines or brand websites.
These data come from ChannelEngine’s latest Marketplace Shopping Behavior Report. For this report, the researcher focused only on marketplaces. The researchers interviewed 4,500 online marketplace shoppers from France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Dutch shoppers prefer search engines
According to the data, only in the Netherlands, online shoppers start their online product discovery on search engines more often (38 percent) than they do on online marketplaces (27 percent). In comparison, in the United Kingdom, only 18 percent of consumers start their journey on search engines. And 54 percent of shoppers in the United Kingdom start on online marketplaces.
Only 14% of shoppers start their product search on a brand website
Only 14 percent of shoppers start their product search on a brand website. When asked whether shoppers would be more likely to buy on a brand website or an online marketplace, 63 percent said they would buy from an online marketplace. This is due to the large variety of products on marketplaces, as well as the possibility to compare prices.
Possibilities for brand websites
However, this does not mean that all is lost for brand websites. Shoppers do rate brand websites high on trustworthiness (46 percent) and reliability (41 percent). The researchers think that brand websites can still gain a competitive advantage, if they focus on exclusive deals and membership perks.
