April 22, 2008

Fuel Watch - Profiling Bargain Hunters Online

The announcement last week of an Australian national scheme that will publish fuel prices online for the next day has highlighted the impact of empowering consumers with time-sensitive information. Quite some time ago I wrote about financial services and information asymmetry, specifically the power of the Internet to shift information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not, and believe that a similar principle applies here.

On the fuel watch debate, Melbourne Business School Professor of Management, Joshua Gans writes in this post, Is Ignorance Good? that there are two kinds of consumers when it comes to purchasing fuel, namely 'fillers' and 'hunters':

"Fillers don't know or have the time to search for the best petrol deals. They fill up when they need to. On the other hand, hunters are shrewd individuals who what to pay less for petrol."

The FuelWatch WA website has been cited as a successful precedent to the nation-wide scheme, so I decided to use our Lifestyle Demographics tool to profile who these 'hunters' might be.

There are two predominant household groups likely to visit FuelWatch WA - Hitwise Lifestyle Mosaic Groups, 'Privileged Prosperity', the most affluent families in the most desirable locations; and 'Family Challenge', mixed families with stretched budgets in outer suburbs. Both 'Privileged Prosperity' and 'Family Challenge' households indexed above 190 in visits to Fuel Watch WA for the 12 weeks ending 12 April 2008.

It's interesting that the households that spend time researching the best petrol deals are from such contrasting socio-economic backgrounds - financial 'smarts' and necessity appears to motivate the bargain hunter. When the national website is launched later this year, we'll see if the audience profile evens out to represent more consumers as some predict, or whether we'll see the same types of households scouting fuel prices online.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Primary and Industry

March 20, 2008

What are Kiwis Doing Online? Global Benchmarks

I wrote a month ago about the leading industries that Australians were visiting online. Taking another online snapshot, this time of the New Zealand market, we've determined that Kiwis are more likely to visit News & Media, Portal (Frontpages) and Travel than their counterparts in Australia and the US (week ending 15 March 2008). Also interesting to note that New Zealand visits to online shopping has surpassed the Australian market. Here's a top-line summary:

* News & Media - accounted for 6.7% share of visits the week ending 15 March 2008. Online News & Media consumption was high compared to the Australian and US markets, which accounted for 6.12% and 3.9% market share respectively. The New Zealand Herald was the top news player with 12.4% share of visits, followed by Fairfax's Stuff, with 10.06% share of visits for the week ending 15 March 2008.

* Portal Frontpages – attracted more visits in the New Zealand market with 5.78% share of Internet visits, than in Australia and US, with market shares of 4.43% and 5.55% respectively. The leading Portal Frontpage was MSN New Zealand accounting for 38.31% share of visits, followed by Yahoo!xtra with 15.98% for the week ending 15 March 2008.

* Travel – was a leading industry in the New Zealand market, accounting for 2.67% share of visits, compared to 2.5% in Australia and 2.19% in the US. New Zealand Travel visits for the week ending 15 March 2008 were also higher than the peak online travel season in the US market in 2007, which recorded 2.2% share, week ending 14 July 2007. Leading travel players were Air New Zealand (17.65% share), Wises Maps (3.83%) and Google Maps New Zealand (2.59%) for the week ending 15 March 2008.

* Shopping & Classifieds – accounted for 7.18% market share of visits the week ending 15 March 2008, significantly less than the US market with 9.7%, but ahead of the Australian market with 5.73%. US benchmarks indicate that there is potential for improved performance by vendors in the retail sector to increase online engagement. This is further highlighted by the fact that 28.3% of New Zealand visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites were directed to overseas websites suggesting local inventory opportunities. TradeMe was the leading website in the Shopping & Classifieds industry with a massive 48.4% share for the week ending 15 March 2008.

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Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 02:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 05, 2008

Underbelly vs. So You Think You Can Dance

With the 2008 TV ratings season well and truly started, Australian online searches for viewers' favourite shows have surged. While the new season officially kicked off on February 10, there were increased searches for 'So You Think You Can Dance', the Network Ten talent contest, week ending 9 February 2008, indicating successful marketing leading up to the program.

Nine Network's Melbourne crime drama, 'Underbelly' received a huge spike in searches week ending 16 February 2008, partly related to the court order that banned its screening in Victoria. Underbelly has since received higher volume of search variations than So You Think You Can Dance. The below figure charts search variations for TV programs on Channel 7, Nine Network and Network Ten.

A quick look at the TV ratings over at OzTAM indicates that So You Think You Can Dance attracted more viewers than Underbelly between 17 February and 23 February 2008, contrary to our search data. There is a fairly simple explanation however, with the broadcast ban on Underbelly prompting viewers to search for episodes online instead. A Hitwise Search Term Report on the term 'underbelly' indicates a substantial volume of searches for torrents and downloads.

The likelihood that it was Victorian users seeking to download episodes of Underbelly is reflected by our Demographics data. The Traffic Breakdown chart shows that 39.53% of traffic to Underbelly came from Victoria. As Victoria represents 23.91% of the online population, the index of Underbelly's representation in this State is 165.36.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
Posted to Television

March 04, 2008

Social Graph – Implications for Marketers

Last week we released our Asia Pacific Social Networking Report – I thought I would share an excerpt that discusses the importance of the social graph for marketers in 2008.

The social graph is a notion that refers to the data that expresses an individual: their consumer preferences and behaviours; and their various social networks, including friends, family, professional associates and online contacts. The social graph will be an important point of debate in 2008 as it poses two key problems: for users there is the challenge of managing multiple networks – including logins and importing/exporting personal data. For social network owners, there is the commercial decision of how they should participate in an 'open Internet', defined by platforms that permit data sharing between networks.

While these may be technology or end-user considerations, marketers will need to watch this issue closely as it could impact how they choose to work with social networks. This could involve developing widgets that are compatible for multiple social networks, or applications that draw in data from the full spectrum of a user's social graph. Other potential avenues for marketers include targeting websites that facilitate management of user data sources, such as Plaxo.

The movement of Australian Internet users across multiple social networks is highlighted by the figure below. The downstream traffic from each of the major social networks to other industry players demonstrates a wide dispersal of traffic.

* Of the traffic that MySpace, Facebook and Bebo send to other Social Networks, more than 89% of their downstream traffic is sent to second-tier players. While the major players hold concentrated market share of visits to the Social Networks custom category, there is significant referral traffic to minor networks. This underpins the importance of understanding multiple network loyalties.

* After visiting Facebook or Bebo, most users are likely to visit MySpace. While this is a reflection of the dominance of MySpace in market share of visits, it could also be because MySpace offers additional features to the other networks, such as bands and artists content. Network differentiation is likely to be an important factor in how Social Networks will compete for users.

* Bebo received 2% of downstream traffic from MySpace, compared to 1% from Facebook. This indicates that MySpace and Bebo users could have stronger network 'affinities', with users influencing migratory behaviour across both networks.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 12:22 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Social Networking