Amazon has changed the way the world shops, but maybe not as much as Jeff Bezos' $25 billion fortune might suggest: going to the store still has the greatest influence on what people decide to buy, a new report says.
Forrester Research surveyed 4,500 U.S. adults online and found that in every major consumer category other than travel, shoppers said visiting a store served as the most important source of research before buying.
In one sense, the finding is hardly surprising. The most recent U.S. Census Bureau figures still put e-commerce at little more than 5 percent of the country's total retail sales.
At the same time, that percentage is more than triple the rate of a decade ago, and the trend line is only rising. In relation to how few purchases are made online even today, Forrester's results actually reflect the internet's outsized influence on retail buying and selling. Retailer websites were nearly as important to shoppers as stores for clothing and over-the-counter health purchases, for example. Brand websites were almost equal to stores for beauty products and footwear. For consumer electronics and cars, professional review websites tied store visits in importance.
In all, 60 percent of respondents said they visited a manufacturer's website while researching a product. Nearly as many said they visited a retailer's website.
One source of online information that consumers didn't seem to think mattered much, however, should trouble one of Amazon's arch rivals:
"It's also interesting that consumers don't consider use of a search engine as a particularly influential source of information for their ultimate purchase decision," according to the report by Forrester analysts Cory Munchbach and Gina Sverdlov.
That insight can't make Google happy, especially given the apparent success of its revamped product search listings. Perhaps Google has already recognized the continued vitality of bricks-and-mortar in the world of commerce, which could explain the company's baby steps into the physical world of buying and selling with its same-day delivery service.
The instant gratification of in-person shopping presents its own challenge to Amazon, which depends upon low prices, wide selection and increasingly fast, cheap delivery to trump the in-store experience.
In all, Forrester's findings suggest no one in the selling business can afford to ignore the primal satisfaction of touching holding something in your hand before you buy. Human toolmaking and trade both started as hands-on endeavors; as much as we now love Amazon Prime, we as a species aren't likely to give up in-person consumption anytime soon.
