Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - North America
Analyst Weblog
Gas Pump Prices and Cost Sensitivity
June 25, 2009
According to a survey fielded by AAA, 37.1 million Americans will be traveling over the July 4th holiday weekend. According to AAA if this prediction proves true, it will represent a 1.9% decrease from the same week in 2008.
As we've done in the past, I'll update our charts on actual gas prices and corresponding Internet activity. First, a chart showing U.S. Retail gas prices (regular grade, nationwide) charted with the volume of searches on "gas prices."
As we can see from this chart, even though gas prices have been steadily increasing over the last several weeks, searches for "gas prices" have remained well below their highs from last fall. Arguably, "gas price" searches represent cost sensitivity as Internet searchers are most likely looking for either news on gas prices or the lowest priced gas in their neighborhood.
To get closer to price sensitivity, the following chart, visits to a custom category of gas price websites, may be a more accurate reflection of our concerns over pump price:
Finally to the survey-based prediction from AAA, here's a chart of gas prices and visits to a custom category of leading roadside motel chain websites:
Roadside motel site visits appear to have peaked during the week ending 6/13/09 (most likely representing research and online bookings for this upcoming holiday week). Comparing visits data year-over-year, we find that visits are down 5.5% compared to the same week in 2008.
While it might be easy to blame a potential decrease in next week's holiday travel on rising pump prices, Internet behavior tells us that our price sensitivity is relatively low. Perhaps general economic concerns are the more likely culprit.
Posted by Bill Tancer at 04:36 PM
| 
(0)
| 
(0)
In Categories Economy
Movie Tickets - Reconciling Web Visits with Box Office Dollars
June 16, 2009
As we discovered in yesterday's post, the demographics of web visitors by site and industry are constantly changing. I ran into this same phenomenon this morning when analyzing visits to the top movie ticket sites (e.g. Fandango and Moviefone).
According to IMDb's Box Office Mojo, year-to-date box office revenue for 2009 at $4.6 billion, puts this year ahead of last by 10.7%. Based on the chart below I was expecting box office numbers this year to show a steep decline.
So why the discrepancy between visits to movie ticket sites and actual ticket sales which should show some correlation? I checked the demographics of visitors to these sites for the four weeks ending June 13, 2009 to the same week in 2008.
The change in movie ticket site demographics could indicate that this year's movie-goers are less likely to check online movie ticket sites versus a year ago. Closer examination of the demographic change shows that higher income visitors are declining in year-over-year visits while lower income visitors are increasing. We know from previous analysis that affluent Internet users exhibit more cost-savings behavior then their less affluent counterparts. Could that be the cause of divergence between visits and dollars?
Posted by Bill Tancer at 01:34 PM
| (1)
| (0)
In Categories Entertainment
Facebook Surge – The Gen X/Gen Y Tradeoff
June 15, 2009
Robin Goad, our UK Research Director wrote about the surge in traffic to Facebook in the UK in response to the premier this weekend of personalized or vanity usernames. Here’s a daily chart of Facebook’s U.S. marketshare:
While we also witnessed an uptick in marketshare this weekend, up 2.8% from Friday June 12th to Saturday June 13th (personalized usernames were made available at 12:01am on Saturday), the more interesting chart trend in the U.S. is the inflection point in marketshare growth in early May.
Since May, the marketshare of visits to www.facebook.com have increased 22%. I was curious as to if this growth was the result of increased usage among the same demographic or if demographics of visitors to the site had changed. While the change in age demographics over the last month has been minimal, a year-over-year comparison tells a very striking story:
While Millennials (18-24 year-olds) have decreased by nineteen percentage points, Gen X’ers (25-34 year-olds) have increased over twelve points and (35-44 year-olds) seven points.
May’s tipping point may indicate the mainstream adoption of Facebook. If that is true, and early adopters are, in the case of social networking, the 18-24 year old crowd, where are younger Internet users flocking to today?
NB percentage drop in 18-24 corrected from "nine" to "nineteen" - Thanks for the spot Phil.
Posted by Bill Tancer at 04:52 PM
| (2)
| (2)
Real Estate Looking Up? Comparing Home and Apartment Queries
June 09, 2009
Last months release of April real estate figures indicates an uptick in the market. Existing home sales of 4.68MM for April were up 2.9% compared to March. New home sales registered a very slight increase of .2% or 352,000 new homes for the month. Even though housing starts were down a dismal 12.8%, when you pull out multifamily dwellings, single family homes actually showed an increase of 2.8% for April.
As we've shown in the past, search data around the real estate market can help us figure out market direction. Based on the assumption that most home buyers in today's Internet age start their home purchase mission online, searches for terms such as "homes for sale" should correlate to the NAR Existing Home Sales number.
Here's a three year chart on search volume for "homes for sale":
While we saw a promising uptick in home purchase related searches earlier this year, over the last two weeks that upward trend seems temporary. In the past, we found it very illuminating to examine the competitive substitute of apartment rental searches alongside home sales purchases to get a better sense of rent versus buy consumer sentiment.
In March this year we saw another promising signal, the drop in "apartments for rent" searches compared to "homes for sale." Unfortunately, over the last two weeks apartment searches have surged counter to the drop in home sales queries. Looks like April's positive outlook may be short-lived.
Posted by Bill Tancer at 05:58 PM
| (2)
| (0)
In Categories Real Estate
