Consumers are very similar in many ways, but there are also differences. The economic situation also casts a shadow on the digital consumer’s purchasing path. The study prepared by Chief Economist compares the purchase path of digital consumers. The extensive version of the survey is available to the members of the Trade Union on our members’ website. Especially companies operating in international markets should take them into account. One significant factor that can explain many differences between consumers, for example, is the development of digital commerce and the maturity of online shopping in the market, and especially Amazon’s influence on consumer habits and expectations.
Influencer have power
One of the biggest changes in the initial stages of the digital consumer’s purchase path has been the increasing importance of influence for purchasing. The influence of influence on purchasing is particularly large among under 30 years of age, 38 percent of whom have already made purchases of products advertised in this way. The influence of influences on the purchasing of people under 30 is stronger.
Social media and the role of influences as providers of purchase stimuli have been able to shorten and speed up the initial stages of the purchase path and partially displace consumers’ search for information about their potential purchases. There are indications in the research that the importance of information search in the consumer’s purchase path has weakened in recent years. While before the pandemic, 76 percent of considering a larger digital purchase acquired information related to their purchase online, now the proportion is 66 percent.
A similar development has also taken place in the comparison countries, but to an even greater extent. Only half of considering a larger digital purchase look for product-related information online. At the same time, the meaning or use of information acquisition sources has also changed. Search engines are still the most important source of information about digital shopping, and their importance has not changed much, but the use of other previously popular sources of information, such as online stores’ own pages, price comparison pages, customer reviews or brands’ own websites, has decreased.
Accelerating inflation can again increase consumers’ search for information before digital purchases, if rising prices and weakening purchasing power lead to a more detailed consideration of purchases than before. There are also indications of this in all comparison countries, as the general search for information and the use of price comparison websites has not decreased since last year.