Consumers Search Online, Seek Offline

Recent studies show that nearly half of all purchases, in which product research was conducted online, occur offline. Among those searching for product information online 25 percent eventually made purchases but only 37 percent of those purchases were actually conducted online while 63 percent took place in the physical counterpart. MediaPost reports that the proportion of online and offline purchases varies among categories but the majority still lies in offline venues.

Click-through rates and online conversions play a role in the ultimate outcome of such statistics, as they are Web-only metrics and do not paint an entirely descriptive picture. The research, at the moment, seems to be more of a quantitative report rather than qualitative.