What’s the first thing you do after deciding you need to purchase something? Chances are, you will open your web browser and your search journey will ultimately bring you to the place where you can buy anything: Amazon.
In May of 2023, Infillion surveyed 779 US adults on their consumer behaviour, with the goal of better understanding what the consumer journey looks like today. Respondents must have had purchased a new product within the past 6 months, and were then asked a series of questions about this purchase journey.
In a traditional, multi-select question type, respondents were asked to select all of the touchpoints that they interacted with throughout their journey, Amazon being just one of them. The top 3 touchpoints that were selected included:
- Search engine (40%)
- Company website (39%)
- Reviews and testimonials (38%)
Only 8% of respondents selected that they had visited an online retailer like Amazon.
Respondents were then provided a thought prompt, where they were asked to think about various dimensions of their purchase journey.
Following this, they were asked to talk about their end-to-end purchase journey using Phonic’s audio recording functionality.
In this open-ended voice-based qualitative data, we found that 18% of respondents actually ended up on Amazon at some point throughout their journey - a 10 point increase from what the closed-ended question suggested. Interestingly, only 65% of respondents made their purchase on Amazon. So what role did Amazon play in the remaining one-third? Although some respondents had clear purchase intentions when arriving on the site, others used Amazon more creatively.
In today’s connected world, consumers are organically trained to be researchers from an early age, and if consumers are researchers, then Amazon is their database. Respondents described using Amazon to browse different brands for the same type of product, compare specs, and finally, read reviews.
“I started with Amazon so that I could get an idea of the different brands out there.”
In some cases, respondents actually made in-store purchases and Amazon still managed to be a pivotal part of their purchase journey.
Whether that be in the moment…
“… for ease, I just went to look at different Amazon reviews [on my phone] and I decided what to get pretty much based on… which products had the highest reviews.”
Or after making their in-store purchase…
“I even spoke to the community blog on Amazon to share my positive story.”
Interestingly, even when Amazon was not part of their purchase journey at all, respondents used Amazon to help them describe their purchase or compare their current purchase to a previous one made on the retailer site.
It’s safe to say that Amazon is always top of mind for these consumers, even when it’s not a part of their actual transaction.
The Value in Voice
Apart from the Amazon findings, respondents demonstrated a willingness and excitement towards talking about their experiences. 3 in 4 respondents used over 100 words, with the median word count at 152. The average audio response length was 2 minutes and 18 seconds - this is incredibly rich, uninterrupted speech.
The Amazon research described above shows that voice data allows us to uncover the whole picture, rather than a fragmented view. Through voice, we learned that Amazon is used as a database to help find the best product, and at the core of this database is an online social community. Could the researchers have uncovered these insights from closed-ended questions? Perhaps! But, they would have had to have strong predictions to ask the right questions, otherwise these nuanced findings would have been beyond reach. Much of market and consumer insights relies on exploratory research, and for this we need the flexibility of qualitative methods. Voice surveys provide this flexibility, at scale.
Your audience is ready to talk. It’s time for you to listen.
