Many do money U-turn on online search

Seven out of 10 internet users change their mind about products and brands after online research for financial services, with majority preferring to make the final purchase offline, says a survey.

According to a money report compiled by Google India on the financial service industry by combining the Google search trends in India and an independent research report conducted by TNS Australia, over 2/3rd of all internet users use online sources when researching for financial products.

The report further said that during the online research phase, over 66 per cent of the internet users changed their mind about the product and brand.

"While the final purchase of the product or service is still done offline – internet research influenced 2 out of 3 applications - with 24 per cent users buying/applying online, 70 per cent applying offline and 38 per cent buying offline influenced by online," the report said.

Google India Managing Director & VP Sales & Operations Rajan Anandan said: "We believe that financial services can create significant value by innovating on the digital medium and adopting an 'online first' approach to serve the needs of the digitally savvy customers."

India today has over 137 million Internet users and of those 99 million are urban users with high disposable income.

The report further said the total search volume for finance related queries are growing at over 43 per cent year-on-year on Google and of these, banking related queries account for over 73 per cent.

The report also highlighted the increase in usage of mobile phones to surf the Internet for finance related information. Further 1 out 10 finance related queries in India, comes from mobile.

The most searched banking brand during April 2011 to March 2012 were – HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank and Union Bank, it said.

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