Consumers looking for financial services used the internet to research the most for loans (home and personal), followed by insurance, a report compiled by internet search engine giant Google India has said.
Internet in India has evolved from merely surfing social networking sites and communicating over emails. Indians today use the internet to do extensive research for product or service purchase.
The report was done by combining Google search trends in India and an independent research report conducted by market research firm TNS Australia on the influence of internet on the purchase decision of financial products by Indian Internet users. ?Internet has begun to impact purchases significantly,? says Rajan Anandan, managing director at Google India.
?Its usage has moved to utility based search than earlier mere social communication or networking,? he said. Today, there are over 137 million Indians on the internet and they spend on an average 72 minutes a day on it.
There are over 99 million urban Indian users now active on the internet.
According to the report, online medium is the most preferred source of information for internet users, with over 2/3rd of all internet users using online sources when researching for financial products. Over 66% of the internet users who were in the market to buy financial products changed their mind about the product and brand.
The report also revealed that during the research process, internet plays an important role at various stages of the buying process with over 42% users saying they became aware of new products and brands, 58% said that internet helped in their initial research and over 62% used internet for intense research before deciding on their final purchase.
While the final purchase of the product or service is still done offline ? internet research influenced 2 out of 3 applications ? with 24% users buying/applying online, 70% applying offline and 38% buying offline influenced by online. “Given the reach of Internet to high value customers and its influence on the decision making for financial products – 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,? says Anandan of Google India.
The total search volume for finance related queries are annually growing at over 43% on Google. On searches coming from desktop – banking related queries account for over 73% of the total queries. The report also highlighted the increase in usage of mobile phones to surf the Internet for finance related information, with mobile queries on Google search growing 3 times faster than the searches coming from desktop.