• by Aaron Baar , August 3, 2011

Home appliance shoppers are increasingly deciding which brands and models they would like to purchase before entering a store, and they're more satisfied with their choices than those who select brands in store.

According to new research from J.D. Power and Associates, nearly half (44%) of cooktop, range and oven owners said they selected the brand they wanted before they went shopping, an increase of 6% from last year. In the clothes dryer and refrigerator segments, the increase was smaller (4%) but no less significant.

"The shift is along four or five percentage points, which is not insignificant," Jim Howland, senior director of the real estate and construction industries practice at J.D. Power and Associates, tells Marketing Daily. "It's consistent with what we see in other studies: here's more information available to consumers, and it's our observation that people are taking advantage of the Internet and other sources of information to research products before they buy them."

Such prior research is also leading to higher satisfaction rates among appliance shoppers. Among the owners who said they researched brands before visiting a retailer, satisfaction rates were 20 to 34 points higher (depending on the type of appliance, on a 1,000-point scale) than those who didn't do prior research. Consumers who went as far as selecting a brand prior to visiting a retailer had satisfaction rates that were 14 to 29 points higher than shoppers who selected the retailer first, then selected a brand.

"When you consider satisfaction, you have to consider the expectations as well," Howland says. "When the customer has more access to information or has done homework upfront, they're probably a little more convinced that they got a good deal or a good value."