The Homa Files

Excerpted from WSJ, “New Info Shoppers,” By Mark Penn, January 8, 2009

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With so much attention on psychological marketing these days — finding new ways to tap into people’s heads — perhaps the single most neglected trend out there is the move towards more hard-nosed information-based shopping and purchasing … 

A special kind of consumer has taken a major role in the marketplace — the new info shopper. These people just can’t buy anything unless they first look it up online and get the lowdown … They have become highly suspicious of many TV ads: in a shoppers survey we did, 78% of them said that ads no longer have enough information they need. So many of them search online for virtually everything …

A whopping 92% of respondents said they had more confidence in information they seek out online than anything coming from a salesclerk or other source. They believe the information they find, not in the information that is spoon-fed to them, and the vast number of clicks today prove that they really are devoting time and energy to ferreting out detailed info before they buy.

We have seen many of the big market areas convert to an information-driven model — cars, homes, personal computers and medical care are areas where nearly 4 in 5 shoppers say they gather information on their own from the Web before buying … Now this trend is spreading down the product chain. In our survey, 24% said they are doing online research before buying shampoo …

The point is that advertising isn’t just moving to the Web, it’s got to grapple with an entirely new kind of shopper and way of shopping. Marketers now have to balance traditional media, online media, and content that is generated by experts, bloggers and consumers themselves. An astonishing 70% of Americans now say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before they make their buying decisions …

New Info Shoppers are bigger than a microtrend. They represent a broad shift in the marketplace brought about by the Internet, higher education, and changing economic times. But the question is when is the marketplace is going to really catch up to them.

Edit by SAC

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Full Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123144483005365353.html

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This entry was posted on February 3, 2009 at 7:17 am and is filed under Mktg - Consumer Behavior. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.