Study Finds Shoppers Keep Researching Products After Deciding to Buy

Shoppers drawn to researching products — even after making up their mind.

Shoppers delaying purchases as research becomes more satisfying, study finds. A new global study conducted by digital self-knowledge platform MyIQ has found that modern shoppers continue to research products even after they have selected their preferred purchase.

What Did the Myiq Global Shopper Study Find?

In the study, which saw 13,472 adults from across North America, Europe, Latin America and Australia participate, 56% of respondents said that they continued to research products that they had already chosen. Instead, many consumers reported that continuing to research a product actually provided them with more satisfaction than actually buying it, with 51% of participants reporting this phenomenon.

Meanwhile, 67% of participants said they often spent a lot of time researching and viewing products that they eventually decided not to buy.

Today’s wealth of online information about goods and services can make it difficult for people to know when they have acquired enough information to make a purchase decision. With online product reviews, price comparison tools and retail feeds at their fingertips, today’s shopper searches for information across a number of different online sources before making a purchase.

On average, 62% of online shoppers access three or more sources of information online before making a purchase decision for a product or service they were already interested in purchasing.

Why Do Shoppers Research Products After Deciding to Buy?

Because new information has the potential to create new doubts, today’s data-enabled consumers have an unpredictable shopping path. While they excel at finding information to support their choices, many shoppers struggle to know when they have enough information to make a purchase.

As a result, shopper hesitation is becoming more the norm, and has the potential to turn what were once relatively straightforward purchasing decisions into lengthy research processes that frequently get put off or abandoned altogether.

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Related article: Are Consumers Cutting Back — or Just Choosing Differently?

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