Updated: Thanks to Daria for letting me know that the link to the Yahoo! / OMD report was broken.  It’s fixed now. 

While we’re on the topic of funnels and purchase paths, let’s revisit a post from last year called The Purchase Tumbler. A study from Yahoo! and OMD, last year, suggested that marketers should be thinking about the “purchase tumbler” as opposed to the “purchase funnel”. I was able to track down a copy of the actual research report called “Long & Winding Road: The Route to the Cash Register”. Download the research report here.

Here’s a quick summary - the report suggests that consumer follow one of four distinct paths: Quick, Winding, Long, and Long and Winding:

• QUICK: This path involves little consideration. Consumer packaged goods are often quick paths.
• WINDING: Comparison shopping between different channels, including online and offline retailers, typifies this path. Retail goods are often winding paths.
• LONG: This path involves researching various options over an extended period of time. Technology purchases are often long paths, particularly if the price tag is high.
• LONG AND WINDING: This path requires investing a considerable amount of time researching across several channels. Many big ticket items — including automobiles and financial services — follow a long and winding path. These paths offer marketers the most opportunity to impact and possibly sway a purchase decision in their favor, because consumers of these products are the hungriest for information.

The above graphic - as well as the ones below - can be found in the report linked to above, provides an overview of these four paths. This next graphic shows how consumers make a statement about their values and personality when choosing a particular purchase path.

The quick path appeals to people who are decisive, competent, feel lucky and want instant gratification while the long and winding path is for folks are tenacious, focused, driven, hardworking, independent and resourceful.

Interestingly, the prevalence of the paths differ across types of purchases. Long plus long and winding is the prevalent purchase path for auto, finance, and technology purchases. While retail goods range between is mostly a long purchase and consumer packaged goods (CPG) purchases are quick.

Most importantly though, the research highlights that while the Web is the most common tool used for research purchases, the final purchase still occurs offline more than 70% of the time across purchase types.

As I said last year, marketers still need to improve their search engine marketing efforts as well as “give up control” of their information (Dell has opted to include user reviews on certain products page like this XPS 210 product detail page). Consumers are going to get this information from someone else if that can’t get it from you. Give up control; and in return, gain an opportunity to control part of the conversation.