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.When it comes to shopping, consumers nowadays do their fair share of homework before making a purchase. GroupM Search teamed up with ComScore and from data collected from 1 million U.S. Internet users found that search is the single most important factor in the beginning of the purchase process. They found that 58 percent of all consumer journeys that end in purchase begin with search, followed by company sites (24 percent) and then social media (18 percent). Looking at the overall purchase process though, it looks like consumers are just as likely to use search or a combination of search and social during the purchase process, while only 1 percent uses only social during the purchase process. For consumers, social is more about getting friends’ opinions about products and brands. As the findings show, social media alone is not a key part of the purchase process, but tied with search, it is an important tool.
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