The purchase ecosystem
Discovery is distributed, conversion is concentrated
Consumers discover everywhere but convert somewhere specific. That holds at both speeds: however differently they reach confidence, deliberate researchers and shortcut-takers converge in the same trusted purchase environments. No matter how scattered the journey, purchase tends to concentrate in a few trusted places.
Physical retail isn't dying, it’s just doing a different job
Physical retail remains the second most common purchase environment globally at 26%. It endures for the same reason consumers research more online: it reduces the risk of getting it wrong. Marketplaces win, but not everywhere equally
Online marketplaces dominate purchase completion globally at 33%, but the picture shifts sharply by market. Germany sits at 43%, the UK at 39%, France at just 24%. There's no single global pattern here, only local concentrations of trust.
Affiliate and Partnership marketing is where the confidence is building
Across the wider market, 89% of brands using affiliate and partner platforms expect to increase investment in the next 12 months. AI, automation and data-driven optimisation are seen as its biggest future drivers, while 37% of the market overall cite privacy and transparency as having a major impact on where partner marketing goes next.
Where marketplaces aggregate products, AI aggregates decisions. Brands not integrated into AI recommendation environments may already have a visibility gap they can't yet measure, because nobody's reporting on a channel they can't see.
The numbers confirm this. AI search visitors are converting at around 14%, compared to roughly 3% for traditional Google organic. Yet only 14% of marketers currently track AI search as its own channel, and only around 30% of brands maintain consistent visibility in AI answers. The gap between where consumers are going and where brands are measuring is already significant.
Creators aren't a separate category here. They're part of this same ecosystem, sitting alongside marketplaces, retailer platforms and AI tools as one more trusted environment consumers route their decisions through. Treating creator partnerships as something distinct from affiliate and partner marketing misses how consumers are actually behaving.
Social commerce hasn't delivered on its promise
Only 8% of global purchases come through social commerce, despite years of investment from platforms and brands.
Yet competition for attention on these platforms keeps intensifying: TikTok CPMs rose 15.6% year on year, and Meta advertising costs climbed 14% against only a 6% increase in impressions. More spend is not translating into more purchase completion.
THE MISCONCEPTION
Consumers buy wherever they discover, and brands grow independently.
They don't, and they can't. Consumers convert where uncertainty is lowest, not where they first encountered a product. Growth is orchestrated across partner networks, not built channel by channel in isolation.
KEY TAKEAWAY FOR RETAILERS AND BRANDS
Growth isn't driven through a single channel.
It's something you orchestrate across an ecosystem. The brands coming out on top aren't necessarily the loudest, they're the most integrated.
HOW ARE YOU RESPONDING?
Where does your brand create confidence—and where does it convert?
You can join the discussion using #GetAWinWithAwin.
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