Traditional media stronger than ever in influencing purchasing decisions

Addressing a seminar on the impact of the internet on families, held at the Dusit Hotel hosted and organized by the UAE Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA), Hess argued that marketers had an opportunity to affect purchasing decisions with brand messaging even after consumers made up their mind about where to buy. Hess used excerpts from his study titled "It's a Family Affair: the Media Evolution of Global Families in a Digital Age," to illustrate the influence of technology and media on the purchasing habits of families as a unit.

"Technology and media are essential to planning, researching and acting on many of family life's important priorities, and that multi-tasking significantly extends the average day's activities beyond 24 hours," stated Hess.

"Sixty-three percent of consumers gather information when they first begin researching a purchase, 57% when they are narrowing down their options, 42% when they are deciding where to buy, and 51% when making their final decisions. At each stage, it is the internet that they turn to for gathering information and it is used more than any other resource," he added.

The internet also serves as a site for communal shopping, in the sense that it offers consumers access to a vast community of shoppers, who share knowledge, shopping tools, product reviews and even coupons to help others make purchase decisions, Hess pointed out.

Elaborating further on the changed shopping habits, Hess disclosed that 25% of people have posted reviews of products or services on-line, providing a reliable source of information to other shoppers. "Mobile and camera phones, email, text messaging and other digital tools have contributed to the emergence of a shopping community whose members influence each other in their purchasing decisions," he added.

Although consumers still prefer to go and shop in the physical market place, Hess said, in many markets in the west the rising cost of gas and related products may encourage more on-line buying and subsequently more on-line information sharing. "The conclusion that we could draw from these pointers is that the profusion of information will broaden, rather than narrow, consumers' choices by the time they get to a store to make a purchase. And this makes the role of advertising - 'just in time advertising' - and the buying cues in the in-store environment all the more important," he concluded.