Most online consumers (59 percent) begin their shopping searches on aggregator sites rather than at merchant sites, according to a report conducted by BizRate Research on behalf of Shopzilla. Aggregator sites include search engines, comparison shopping sites, shopping portals, and auction sites.
This represents a 13 percent rise since late 2002, when approximately 46 percent of online shoppers reportedly went to aggregator sites, and the majority (54 percent) went straight to merchant sites.