According to a new report from The NPD Group, many U.S. consumers remain reluctant to purchase certain consumer electronics products online, even after using the Web to find out more about them. For some products, that makes sense. In other cases the reluctance is harder to figure out.
While 52 percent of consumers would seek out information about smartphones on the Web, just 23 percent could imagine themselves going online to purchase one. That might makes a great deal of sense to you. A smart phone is a highly personal item.
In some other cases, the findings are more puzzling. The research suggests that televisions are the fourth most-likely item that consumers research online prior to purchasing (56 percent); however, it's the least likely electronics product that consumers would actually purchase online (19 percent). TVs aren't personal. On the other hand, it's a bigger-ticket item than many other products, so that could explain the hesitance.
In contrast more people (66 percent) do both their research (66 percent) and expect to make an actual purchase (34 percent) online for PCs then for any other CE device.
Top consumer electronics products consumers were "extremely" or "very likely" to purchase online, included the following:
- Computer software | 34%
- Computer | 34%
- eReader | 32%
- Digital Camera | 30%
- Computer accessories/peripherals | 30%
- Tablet computer | 29%
- Printer | 24%
- Smartphone/mobile phone | 23%
- Camcorder | 21%
- Blu-ray player | 21%
- Home audio | 20%
- Television | 19%
