WSG Newsletter:
Comparison Shopping on the Web

Issue: November 29, 2003

Each new holiday season draws more surfers into shopping online. This year (2003) Jupiter Research projects 40 percent of surfers in the United States will do some of their holiday shopping online, possibly ringing up sales online as high as 17 billion dollars. In Canada, a survey done for MSN.ca also anticipates an increase with 32 percent of Canadian surfers doing some buying online, up from 23% in 2002. (Reported in the Vancouver Sun, November 21, 2003)

Comparison Shopping Sites

Shoppers in the United States are fortunate to have shopping sites where shoppers can run product comparisons to find the best product at the lowest price. These comparison shopping sites are growing in popularity. In August 2003, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, 16 percent of U.S. Internet users checked with comparison shopping sites, up 34% from a year earlier.

The attraction is surely because shopping sites are larger than they were a year ago, more informative, and can save time and dollars. The leading four are Shopping.com., BizRate, NexTag, and PriceGrabber. Yahoo also enhanced its shopping site in September with a strong product search engine.

None of these sites is actually a store. They don’t sell goods - they help others sell by indexing their inventories (for which they collect fees). They facilitate access to a wide range of products across many merchants through a catalog-style index and a product keyword search. Stores will include Amazon, Wal-Mart, Sears, Target along with many smaller fry. In addition, some provide additional information about the products -- reviews, ratings, and in some cases buyer guides or reports. Reliability of the merchant is critical. To help buyers, the comparison shopping sites provide information about the merchants, together with ratings and reviews from users.

For customers in the U.S. these sites are a joy to use – simply search for the product, find the best price, assess the merchant, and charge to a credit card. Presto – UPS delivers. But residents in Canada or other countries outside the United States are less blessed. Only a few U.S. online stores will ship to Canada. In those cases, shoppers will pay higher shipping costs, experience longer waits, have to deal with Customs and pay GST. But while they may not be useful for actual purchasing, these product comparison search engines are excellent as research tools – valuable for the product listings, buyers’ guides, reviews, and price data. All support some parameter search for products by which you can select the price range and some desired features to get a list of matching products.

Comparing the Comparison Shoppers

The following describes the five top comparison shoppers and reports on searches I undertook for something electronic - an audio receiver, and something edible - smoked salmon.

Shopping.com
Shopping.com is the most popular, drawing 15% of US online shoppers. It opened on the Web in September 2003 as the merger of longtime comparison shopper DealTime and the product review forum Epinions. There are 3,000 stores and 5 million products. Epinions has over 1 million reviews. Registered users write the reviews and are rewarded for their efforts through an income share program.

Shopping.com encourages drilling down through product categories and attributes. Electronics – Home Audio found 350 Home Audio Receivers. After that it was up to me to choose the price range, brands, technical specifications, and decide if I wanted the receivers to be sorted by price or product rating. A useful combination is to select the price range and sort by product rating. From this list I could pick several models to get a table that compared features. Each product has a link to Epinion product reviews.

Keyword search will show relevant categories. The most likely for smoked salmon is Food and Drinks. There is no sub-category for salmon, but Shopping.com has 73 products. Harry and David will ship to Canada, but adds 30% to the catalog price plus delivery. Shopping.com also lists Additional Resources, which, at least for food, could have more to offer the non-U.S. shopper.

Tips for checking shipping. The shopping comparison search engines assume users are shipping within the United States. To find out if the store will ship to Canada, you must click through to the store’s site. Usually the handling of international orders can be found under “shipping information” or “customer service” or help. If none of these is obvious, it’s not likely a site you want to deal with anyway.

BizRate Shopping
BizRate.com is the largest. In November 2003 it had 28 million products from 39,000 stores and was expected to grow to 40 million products by Christmas. Availability of products is checked four times a day – no out-of-stock items here. About 1,500 to 2,000 stores are rated. Ratings and reviews older than 90 days are removed to keep the site fresh (though this may help the store more than the buyer.) It claims to be fast with results within 20 milliseconds.

BizRate is largely focused on the United States but does have versions under International for several countries including Canada. The idea is great but most product listings for the non-U.S. countries show “Does not ship to”.

Audio receivers are “stereo receivers” at BizRate, of which there were 300. Breakdown is only by price (in thousand dollar increments) and brand. Results can be sorted by rating. Up to three models can be selected and compared feature by feature, but the detail in information, at least for audio receivers, was not as good as at Shopping.com. Reviews are from registered users and are shorter and more casual than those at Epinions.

Meat and Seafood is the category for the 59 entries for smoked salmon. Smiley faces indicate the reputation for the stores. SeaBear SmokeHouse in Washington State gets beaming smiley faces across the board. (It will ship outside the U.S.)

BizRate will keep track of products you’ve been interested in and stores you’ve visited.

NexTag
NexTag has been online since 1999 and has been rising in the radar as a shopping site since mid-2002. Forbes includes it on its Best of the Web list, noting that it is especially good for notices about price drops but poor on product information. (Forbes NexTag review.) Descriptions are very short and the feature comparison is available only for some products – audio receivers but not air purifiers or hedge trimmers.

There were 83 receivers under Electronics – Home Audio - Receivers. There is a good breakdown of attributes: price, brand, channels. The price breakdown is adjusted according to the product. Detail on the feature comparison is good but there are not links to reviews. User reviews are on the individual product pages. NexTag collects many more reviews on sellers than on the products. Its focus is on finding the very best price – so much so that it has charts on the price history and offers price alerts.

There is some food at NexTag – 15 matches on smoked salmon under Food and Wine.

PriceGrabber
Some will know PriceGrabber through its partnership with PC World and Ask Jeeves, where it is the underlying comparison shopper. At PC World the Product Finder combines the reviews of products with PriceGrabber’s price listings. At AskJeeves PriceGrabber powers the Product Search.

PriceGrabber is easy to search for specifics but hard to browse. Within each product type one can filter the search based on a user-set price range, manufacturer and feature. For example, one can ask for receivers matching selected settings for sound, connectors watts, inputs, outputs. While this may enhance search it makes browsing much more difficult. Side-by-side comparisons are as good as Shopping.com’s in detail but the product reviews lack the analysis of those at Epinions. PriceGrabber also keeps track of the top sellers.

PriceGrabber does well on things – it had 287 audio receivers – but it isn’t a place for finding food. It had only two items for smoked salmon, both from WalMart.

Yahoo! Shopping
Yahoo! Shopping has much to offer as well. In September it added a comprehensive product comparison facility that includes buying advice from Consumer Reports and other sources. It extracts results from Yahoo's existing database of 17,000 merchants and millions of products, a new database of paid-inclusion merchants, and another product and merchant database created through Inktomi’s crawler.

Yahoo combines browsing with product finders. Under Electronics – Home Stereo - Receivers there are 19 products. One can narrow the search by selecting from a range of filters or using the finder for manufacturer, sound, watts, and user-specified price range. This is the best of both worlds. The full page of narrowing options informs one of the characteristics to be considered in buying an audio receiver. There are several options for sorting as well – popularity, user rating, price, manufacturer and others.

Yahoo will reference Buying Advice from Consumer Reports, providing the overview – often quite lengthy for free, and an option to buy a full report for $2.95.

Feature comparison is available for some products – audio receivers but not air purifiers. Information is a little scant, though it may depend on the product and manufacturer.

For some products, Yahoo can recommend the top 10 products that match criteria the searcher establishes through a set of questions. It's called SmartSort and is available for digital cameras, MP3 players, personal digital assistants, desktop computers, notebook computers, printers, mobile phones, televisions, and DVD players.

Yahoo Shopping doesn’t have a category for food but there is no shortage of smoked salmon. Results are much enhanced by sponsored links from Overture.

ConsumerSearch
ConsumerSearch is a good source for research about products. It reviews the reviews - collecting and evaluating them, extracting the key points and providing summaries. ConsumerSearch will even report and comment on Consumer Reports.

Consumer Search covers things – electronics, computers, exercise equipment, appliances, office equipment and much else. For each product category, ConsumerSearch provides:

1. Reviews Reviewed: the reviews and links to them ranked and described.
2. Full Story: describes the characteristics of a product, the best makes and models, features to look for, and sources for more information.
3. Fast Answers: list of top-rated products

The weakness with ConsumerSearch is aging content. Very popular product categories in electronics, computers, and photo are current for 2003 with updated reviews and resources. But many others show dates of 2001 and even as far back as 1995. These summaries may still be helpful for outlining general considerations but won’t have information on new models. Price comparisons are done through DealTime and BizRate.

Conclusion

Shopping.com is the strongest overall for product variety, depth of information about products, and user reviews. Yahoo Shopping has breadth but not the same depth. The Finders are very helpful as guides in a product category. Look for product reviews in computers and electronics, and consumer reports in home and garden. Each section has its special features. ConsumerSearch is more thorough in its reviews but may not have current content.

Newsletter by Gwen Harris who really does intend to buy a new audio receiver.