Nearly 60M Americans Sought Finance Info Online In '02

“Financial service consumers who use the Internet as a shopping tool are about 70% more likely to apply for services offline than online,” said Thomas E. Miller, senior consultant at Dieringer. “Moreover, the offline applicants appear to be significantly more brand loyal.”

Particularly noteworthy in 2002 was an increase in use of the Internet for seeking information about loans, mortgages and insurance products, the survey indicates. Nearly 20 million Americans sought product information in each of these categories, trailing only modestly the 24 million consumers who sought product information in credit cards and for investment purposes.

Although the demographic and life stage characteristics of online financial service shoppers varied significantly by the types of products sought, the survey found surprisingly little difference between shoppers who applied online and those who applied offline.

One exception is in loans, where applicants who applied online were significantly more likely to be an ethnic minority or to have lost a job recently than applicants who applied offline. Another exception was found among mortgage seekers, where offline applicants had significantly higher education and income than online applicants.