Mumbai: Seven out of 10 users change their mind about financial products and brands after they research about the products on the Internet, says a study by Google India.
The category most affected due to online research is loans. As many as 75 per cent prospective home loan customers change their decision after a thorough research on the Net. This is 73 per cent in case of personal loans, the Google study notes. Insurance is another category influenced by online research, with 70 per cent customers changing their insurers for motor insurance, 70 per cent for health insurance and 69 per cent for life insurance.
The report was compiled by Google India by combining the Google search trends in India and an independent research report conducted by TNS Australia on the influence of Internet on the purchase decision of financial products by Indian Internet users.
“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,” said Rajan Anandan, managing director and VP sales and operations at Google India.
India has about 137 million Internet users, according to iCube-IMRB survey for July 2012. Of this, 99 million urban India users are active on the Internet. With users shifting their buying patterns based on online research, financial services need to adopt a new approach to engage and serve the needs of the digitally savvy customers.
The study points out that 25 million Internet users have bought at least one product online. Out of this, about 15 million do online banking. Banking queries have also grown significantly. Since 2008, banking queries have grown by 345 per cent, insurance by 265 per cent and investing by 268 per cent.
The BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) sector spends about Rs 1,500 crore in advertisements annually. Of this, less than 10 per cent is for digital advertisement. Seventy-one per cent of Internet users who saw an ad on the TV opt for further research online, and 30 per cent end up buying a product. Whereas, 87 per cent who saw an advertisement on the Internet further researched the product on the web and 39 per cent actually bought it.
The other significant aspect of the study is the increasing use of mobile for finding about financial products. One in every 10 financial query comes from a mobile phone. In terms of percentage growth for search queries coming from mobile phones (banking queries grew at 85 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y), investment related queries grew 105 per cent y-o-y and insurance queries grew 75 per cent y-o-y). Investment-related queries in the mobile space are also the biggest category by search volume in the finance vertical.
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