From Search to Purchase: How Digital Search Reflects Consumer Spending Dynamics

Vollständiger Abstract

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Digital search data are widely used in marketing research and practice as timely indicators of consumer demand. However, this approach often overlooks the behavioral processes underlying search activity. This study reconceptualizes digital search as a decision-stage behavioral signal rather than a mechanical proxy for demand and examines how search behavior translates into realized consumer spending over time. Using category-level Google Trends data linked to transaction-based card spending across six online consumption categories in Türkiye from 2015 to 2025, the study analyzes contemporaneous, dynamic, nonlinear, and context-dependent relationships between digital search and consumption using panel-data regression analysis. The findings show that higher contemporaneous search intensity is associated with lower immediate spending, indicating that elevated search reflects evaluation, uncertainty reduction, and deliberation rather than purchase readiness. Higher contemporaneous search intensity is linked to reduced immediate spending, according to the data, suggesting that increased search is more indicative of evaluation, uncertainty reduction, and deliberation rather than purchase While short-term variations in search activity such as attention or salience shocks accelerate spending, search effects develop dynamically and nonlinearly: spending only rises after adequate knowledge accumulation. Moreover, there are systematic differences in the behavioral meaning of search in different decision contexts. In low-involvement categories, search is more closely associated with rapid purchasing behavior, while in high-involvement categories, it predominantly represents extended deliberation and delayed spending. These findings highlight the importance of reinterpreting the role of digital search in consumer decision-making from a process-oriented perspective.