Top brands say No price comparison please

Julian Sharpe | 12:54 pm | May 16, 2008 | News, Online Media Planning (OMP), Social Media

Top online brands and etailers are moving away from price-comparison sites, as their effectiveness is becoming less effective and asking for greater level of innovation to help with user interaction.

Electronics retailer Dabs.com quoted that traffic quality from price-comparison sites had dropped in the past year, so it has revaluation how it works with them, this have also been backed up with remarks from Firefox and Casio, with Direct Line pulling out of price-comparison over a year ago and using it heavily in there TV advertisements.

The additional bad press received for Loan, Insurance and Car Insurance portals in regards to are you getting real search results or results based on the highest bidder not helping consumers overall belief in the product.

The retail sector is different we believe with smaller retailers being able to use the feeds to undercut major players as many do not have the overheads and are able reduce prices but maintain profit margins, then there are the cash backs sites as championed by Martin Lewis so maybe its not the sites it just shoppers are getting wiser.

Price-comparison sites’ unique UK monthly audiences (March 2008)

Shopping.com 4.2m
Yahoo! Shopping (Kelkoo) 2.5m
Shopzilla.com 2.3m
Ciao! 2.2m
Google Product Search 1.5m

Source: Nielsen Online