Amazon acts as retail research hub

Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - 12:49 by Mike Price

A new survey suggests that most people who want to find out about a specific product will visit Amazon to get the information they need, indicating that it is seen as a research tool as well as a site for safe shopping online.

Kenshoo questioned thousands of consumers as part of its latest report, with almost three quarters of respondents confirming that they regularly look up items on Amazon when carrying out research before making a purchase.

Twenty six per cent said that they relied on Amazon to find out key product info and even to compare prices when visiting bricks and mortar outlets.

Just over half said that even if they had decided to buy a product via safe shopping online from a rival retailer, they would still use Amazon to make sure that they were getting a better deal elsewhere.

Close to one in 10 consumers said that when they encountered a particularly interesting or useful product on Amazon they would let others in their social and professional circles know all about it.

This data cements the idea that Amazon is the first port of call for many consumers who want to buy online, even managing to outdo dedicated search engines like Google as a starting point for shopping journeys.

Amazon is obviously a dominant force in the UK, but the fact that shoppers will still use other sites, even if they have found out about a product on its pages first, indicates that there is still room for competition.

A lot of this is down to the levels of trust that people place in Amazon to be a resource for providing accurate information about products, both in terms of specifications and also customer feedback. Reviews are very influential in the world of e-commerce and Amazon has the biggest community of contributors around.