Yahoo's ROBO Study

Yahoo recently conducted a study to analyze online advertising and consumer retail purchase behavior. Yahoo came up with the term ROBO which stands for Research Online Buy Offline. The study was used to look at the internet advertising and how it effected the online shopper as well as the in store shopper. One of the main things the study focused on was to view if shoppers really do research the item they want to purchase and purchase it online as well. Or, if the consumer researches the product online and takes that information and purchases the product in the store. The study showed that majority of people are using the online advertising and online retail purchasing as a way of researching the product they are looking to buy, then going to a store and purchasing there product. This study displays a large amount in the “in-store” growth due to online advertising and research. The study truly shows how significant the internet has become to all retailers and advertisers.
The findings of the study were that online search marketing through advertising has gave in-store sales a boost, actually three times more than regular in-store display marketing. Online advertising reels the consumer in, they research it, then want to go to a store to physically look into it, and possibly purchase it. From the study 88 percent of the purchases came from in-store retail purchases, the other 12 percent came from people purchasing through the online web advertisings.
I found this article very interesting because I would not have expected the outcome of the study to turn out the way it did. I automatically assumed that since there was online retailing they were making more money due to the convenience. Granite, the study only sampled a small amount of consumers. The consumers in the study however, preferred to research the product online first from the online advertisements, then go to the store physically view it and purchase it while in the retail store. As a consumer myself I do enjoy the convenience of purchasing online, however there are certain products that I am more comfortable purchasing in the store. It makes sense that people research the product online before purchasing it, as would I. If it is a big consumer purchase like a car, I would research it online and go to a dealership to purchase it.
Although internet consumer purchasing has been growing rapidly the Yahoo ROBO consumer behavior study proved that online advertising and research has been increasing the amount of “in-store” retail purchases.

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