Findability Drives Online Buying: "Findability" 10X More Important Than Price

[mandy]

An MIT professor finds that the ability to find products online is almost ten times more important then price alone when it comes to buying online.

MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Erik Brynjolfsson claims to have found that the ability to find products online easily—particularly niche and obscure products—is nearly ten times more important than price alone when it comes to shopping online. Furthermore, the ability of buyers to find rare and obscure items may be overturning one long-held retail standard.

Brynjolfsson finds that consumers are less particularly about price if they're easily able to find that special something which, without the Internet, may be difficult or impossible to purchase. "People do save money by going on line, but when we compared lower prices to greater choice, we found that the value to consumers of having the extra choice was 10 times greater than the value from price alone."

full article: http://news.designtechnica.com/article9033.html

[valleygirl]

The Internet's ability to help buyers locate and purchase obscure and hard to find items may also be a boost to authors, artists, musicians, and others who could not otherwise find their way into traditional retail distribution

Yep.