Google says 84% use search engines for researching on financial products
December 4, 2009 – 12:00 pm by Shalini Amarnani“
We found this article on Aloo Techie…..
A survey conducted by Netpop Research on behalf of Google India to understand the role of internet in purchase of financial products has revealed that 84 per cent of those surveyed use search engines as either a primary source or a gateway to other websites in the purchase decision process for financial products such as home loan, credit card, banking services, insurance, remittance, personal loan and investment.
While 70 per cent of financial purchasers said they use at least one of the user generated content (UGC) sites especially consumer reviews, social networking and blogs in their research, over 40 per cent said they watch finance related online videos on either dedicated video sites like YouTube or financial news or company sites.
An interesting finding of the research was that consumers were found to be more concerned about finance related information during the economic slowdown triggering more comparison and research for information leading to increase in search engine use by 17 per cent in the last one year.
According to Google India, the survey was conducted amongst users who had purchased a product from banking services, home loans, personal loans, credit cards, investments, insurance policies and remittances in the last six months. The respondents also said that traditional media ads and news are also effective in prompting purchasers to go to a search engine to look for more information.
“Internet is emerging as an indispensable part of research and purchase of products and services in India,” Parminder Singh, business head, Google India, has said. “Increase in usage of UGC and online videos also highlight the need to effectively manage brand perceptions which is critical for the finance category as trust is a major component of the final purchase decision.”
If this is true what follows is that user generated information is the most important tool for making financial decisions. But as many of us know these sites are rigged and user generated content is “generated” by design of the company by hiring people to write reviews under different identities.
For a dipstick survey – I would like to ask our readers – most of them in the financial services field themselves- if they use the Internet to research for financial products and their take on user generated content and references.
RSS
2 Responses to “Google says 84% use search engines for researching on financial products”
Internet /Search is definitely playing a key role in providing information to readers and helping them in their decision making exercise… Being from digital agency and having inclination to financial services, I generally surf to get more and more information from products and service offerings…
However when we speak about UGC, as the term suggests “User Generated Content” I personally do not connect / relate / go by the comments and feedback given on forums and other blogs etc.. but not to deny UGC is highly Influential… more negative comments can have a prospect change his / her mind
By Jesal Sanghvi on Dec 16, 2009
Before any thing i would like to know more about the Researched Population. On the face of it, it seems that all those survayed were active Internet users. For them the main Information source for any thing be it cricket or mutual funds is the Internet. for such a group this trend is more obvious than a plesent surprise.
However there ar 2 points i’wd like to point to :-
1) Financial Product purchase decisions are based on a lot of information. And the Indian Netizen has an excellent option to find the same on the Net. Meeting with so many people in person to know their view is (on a specific product) is cumbersome as compared to the Internet route. This becomes an obvious choise.
2) What is Next? should the financial companies go gungho over this statistic and invest in Online media etc.? One has to remember that internet penetration is still abysmally low in India as compared to the developed world.
By VJ1681 on Dec 23, 2009