Almost half of the consumers who researched products online this past holiday season subsequently purchased the same items through an offline channel, according to the new Post-Holiday Online Shopping Study being released today by iProspect and JupiterResearch.
JupiterResearch conducted the online survey in January and received 1,731 responses.
The study found that 47 percent of Internet users who researched products online during the 2005 holiday season then bought the same product by phone, in a physical store or by mail. This highlights the importance for online marketers to measure offline conversions that are generated by online efforts in order to effectively manage their campaigns, according to the study.
Respondents were also asked which sites they used to research products that they then bought either online or offline during the holiday season. The most popular response was merchant sites, with 63 percent of respondents picking this answer. This was followed by search engines, with a 62 percent response rate; manufacturer sites, with a 30 percent response rate; shopping search engines; with a 26 percent response rate and other, with a 14 percent response rate.
Chantal Todé covers catalog and retail news and BTB marketing for DM News and DM News.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
