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Rising Gas Prices = Increased Online Sales
October 10, 2005
My Neighbor Tom Stuart forwarded this great article from Bob Tedeschi at the NY Times that examines a potential connection between sky-rocketing gas prices and increases in online shopping (makes sense). Tom suggested that I pull some Hitwise data to cast some light on the issue.
The chart below shows market share of visits to the Hitiwise Shopping & Classifieds - Department Store category against searches for the term "gas prices."
An interesting point, the spike in this chart coincides with the Katrina spike we highlighted earlier. It appears, however, that its too early to show any coorelation between concern about gas prices (proxy = searches on "gas prices") and online shopping (visits to the Shopping & Classifieds category). That being said the article makes some great arguments... we'll be following this and will update the chart closer to the holiday shopping spikes in Nov-Dec.
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Posted by Bill Tancer at 09:25 PM
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Hey Derek,
Tried the chart w/ cheap gas v. gas prices and found the exact same pattern (although lower volume of searches for "cheap gas") Thanks for the suggestion.
-Bill
Posted by Bill Tancer | October 12, 2005 04:26 PM
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Thanks for the link to the article, Bill. How'd you create this chart to include a category and a search term? I'd like to see what this looks like by using "cheap gas" instead of "gas prices".
Posted by Derek Monteverdi | October 11, 2005 10:32 AM