The study, entitled 'From Clicks to Bricks: The Impact of Online Pre-Shopping on Consumer Shopping Behavior'', used data from 175,000 panellists and compared those who were exposed to online advertising to those who were not exposed. The in-store spending of the panellists was then tracked at five major retailers in the US, including JC Penney and Office Max.
Consumers who were exposed to online advertising were found to be more likely to research products online and then do their purchasing offline. Amy Vener, Senior Director of Retail Category at Yahoo! told comScore:
"Although recent research cites 89 per cent of consumers shop for information about products online, less than seven per cent of retail sales actually take place online".
The study found that exposing consumers to a combination of both search marketing and display advertising resulted in higher lifts in site engagement, in-store purchases, average order size, and total in-store sales revenue.
Following exposure to a combination of search marketing and display advertising, the study found that 90% of incremental sales took place in-store. When exposed to search alone there was a 43% increase in offline sales, with consumers spending on average $16 in-store for every dollar spent online. When exposed to display alone there was a smaller effect, with a 15% increase in offline sales and consumers spending on average $6 in-store for every dollar spent online.
Similarly, a combination of search marketing and display advertising appeared to affect how much consumers engaged with the site, with a 68% increase in page views when exposed to both types of advertising compared to a 46% increase with search only, and 37% with display only. Interestingly, exposure to display advertising was found to influence consumer search behaviour, as searches using brand terms increased by 26%.
