December 19, 2005

Why I Don't Use Shopping Comparison Sites

Well, not me, I've been known to do a wee bit of comparison shopping, but that is the title of a post from Rob Hof of The Tech Beat at businessweek.com. It is a good counterbalance to the industry's mini-buzz from the holiday season and a year full of acquisitions.

see: Why I (Mostly) Don't Use Shopping Comparison Sites (warning: "plugfestivus" in the comment section)

A lot of people have asked me when the comparison shopping space is going to blow up, come into its own, tear the roof off, or whatever you want to call it. Growth is a given. But how much growth, how soon, and is there a tipping point? I suppose at the very high level, you can look at it from two major angles -- 1) people will be able to reap more benefits from comparison shopping as they get more familiar with the functionality that is available 2) new, transformational, low-learning-curve functionality help everyone to be more effective/effecient shoppers. But I digress. Here's my take on Rob's arguments.

(1) The Amazon.com/eBay argument:

Not every purchase requires comparison shopping, thank goodness. Still, I think comparison shopping sites have the opportunity to add value to the shopping process for a much wider range of products than it has in the past. More attributes for "non-traditional" categories could, in some cases, save hours and immeasurable frustration, but the problem is you need a critical mass of attributes for the experience to be even the slightest bit useful.

(2) The familiar vendors argument:

I think this argument gets stronger with each passing year. Initially, price sites were hot. Now pricing is commodity, more or less. The thing that never goes out of style is a more "holistic" comparison shopping experience, with more emphasis on selecting the product that will maximize long-term satisfaction.

(3) The non-gadget buyer argument:

Most of these sites started with gadgets, but many of them have been moving quickly into home, appare, etc. Even if these do not require heavy attribution (but they DO, they DO), we should see more product selection, more user reviews, maybe even new ways to shop for visually-oriented products.

(4) The clumsy filters argument:

See, it is not just me who says this! :-)
Many filters, even though they are practically industry standards by now, do not pass the common sense test. It seems like at many sites it is a foregone conclusion that current filter practices are the best practices. Are they?

(5) The lack of time argument:

I am a glutton for punishment on this topic, probably more than any sane person. I've had to spend hours just to get anywhere close to consensus on product selection. If I was Joe Sixpack, I would throw my hands in the air and try someone equally scientific, like the "Eenie Meenie Minie Moe" method, and save a metric load of time.

While time is a serious limitation to comparison shopping, it could also remain one of the biggest growth areas. For every "X" minutes saved in the shopping process, these sites becomes affordable, timewise, to "X" more people.

Rob ends with this question, "Still, I know a lot of people use these sites, or so the traffic numbers suggest. So tell me: Why?"

For me, this kind of goes back to one of my original posts. When everything comes together perfectly with comparison shopping, it is amazing. When you've had the ideal shopping experience in one area, you tend to crave that same kind of experience with every category. The more you know about all the comparison shopping options, the larger the potential effectiveness gap between the online "CSEs" and other methods of shopping/comparison. Even if I'm almost certain the comparison shopping engines are not up to snuff in a particular category, it is worth a look, eh?

Why I Don't Use Shopping Comparison Sites
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on December 19, 2005 at 7:33 PM
Archived at Online Shopping Engines