An international survey by Rakuten has found that when it comes to the shopping experience of consumers worldwide, the price of an item and the consumers trust in the merchant are the two most important deciding factors when making a purchase online.
In terms of exact numbers, according to a press release, 61% of international shoppers said they preferred price while 49% surveyed considered the “reliability of the retailer to be paramount.” When the results were broken down by region, according to the release, the number one factor in the US was price while trust was of upmost important in Indonesia and Thailand.
After price and reliability, according to the survey, 40% of consumers considered choice, or the variety of products offered, to be the third most important feature to an online store. Forty-percent of American shoppers also found choice as the third most important feature when shopping online.
“This research shows that, while price is important shoppers are increasingly looking for more than that online, they want brands they can rely on, that deliver entertaining and secure shopping experiences,” said Bernard Luthi, CMO and COO of Rakuten.com in the release.
While one of the major buzzwords in the ecommerce industry lately has been free or expedient shipping options, according to the survey, only 29% of those surveyed globally felt shipping options were major factors in their buying behavior. The percentage was somewhat similar in Europe with 26% and 33% in the US.
So what can retailers take away from the survey? There is a need “to focus on creating a reliable shopping experience in order to build loyal consumers who are happy to come directly to them for their shopping needs,” Luthi said in the release.