A research conducted by Netpop Research, LLC on behalf of Google India to understand the role of internet in the purchase of financial products revealed that search engines have become an indispensable tool in the purchase-decision process.
Among those surveyed, 84% said they use search engines as a primary source to research financial products compared to any other medium or type of internet sites, Netpop said in a statement.
The research also revealed that consumers were 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% in the last one year.
The study 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 revealed that traditional media ads and news are also effective in prompting purchasers to go to a search engine to look for more information.
Respondents also cited user-generated content (UGC) - specifically consumer ratings/reviews, social networking sites and blogs as increasingly important source of information with online videos emerging as a new source of information with over 40% users opting to watch videos on finance-related products/news. The research revealed that seven in ten financial purchasers use at least one of these types of sources in their research.
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