New Q1 data from Butterly finds that almost all Canadian shoppers now look up a product before they buy it. In a survey of more than 3,500 consumers, just 1.9% said they rarely research and tend to go on instinct or brand familiarity.
Everyone else looks first.
More than half, 51.6%, research almost everything they buy. Another 30.7% research whenever a purchase feels significant. For any decision that carries weight, the check is close to universal.
For most shoppers, research is no longer a deliberate step in the buying process. It's a reflex, fast and often automatic.
It's also lighter than the word implies. Shoppers aren't building spreadsheets to buy moisturizer. They run a quick check first: a scan of reviews, a glance at what other buyers said. The act is small but nearly universal, and it comes before the decision rather than after.
And it happens constantly. Nearly 68% of respondents shop online multiple times a week or more, and about 24.1% shop daily. These are high-frequency buyers who check small purchases as readily as big ones.
For brands, this is where it stings. If nearly every shopper looks for proof, a product without visible, current and credible proof never makes it into the comparison at all.
“Over the years, we watched people grow steadily less trusting of marketing messages,” said Ali de Bold, CEO of Butterly. “Now the data shows what that means in practice: brands have to earn trust before a customer will commit, not after.”
What happens is this. A shopper finds a product, then searches for evidence it's good quality and worth the price. If that evidence is missing, thin or out of date, the search comes up short, and the shopper moves on to a brand where the proof is waiting.
The first brand never knows. There's no abandoned cart, no drop-off to measure. The sale was lost somewhere the brand can't see.
Where the proof lives matters too. Many shoppers also look beyond the brand's own website to retailer reviews, search results and communities like Reddit. A wall of great reviews on your own site does nothing if the shopper never gets there, having already come up empty somewhere else.
Further, shoppers will be skeptical if all of the reviews on the brand site are 5 stars. No product is perfect. A variety of reviews across the spectrum tells buyers the reviews are real. Anything else reduces trust, looks suspicious and makes them flee.
That changes what reviews and customer content are for. They aren't a closing tactic aimed at shoppers who already want to buy. They're the price of getting considered in the first place. Brands that treat them as optional are polishing the bottom of a funnel most shoppers leave at the top.
The behavior isn't likely to reverse. It's how a digitally active generation shops now, and it hardens every time a product fails to match its marketing and the next check gets more thorough.
"The brands that win from here won't be the ones with the loudest message," De Bold said. "They'll be the ones whose proof is already waiting when the shopper goes looking, because that search is happening whether a brand is ready for it or not."
The Proof-First Purchase Path is Butterly's Q1 2026 survey of 3,522 Canadian consumers. Full results are available here.
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