INMA_A01.QXD

criteria for purchase include product characteristics, familiarity and confidence and con-

sumer attributes. Typical results from the evaluation are: groceries (27/50), mortgages

(15/50), travel (31/50) and books (38/50). De Kare-Silver states that any product scoring

over 20 has good potential, since the score for consumer attributes is likely to increase

through time. Given this, he suggests companies will regularly need to review the score

for their products. The effectiveness of this test is now demonstrated by data for online

purchases in different product categories (Figure 2.19, page 70).

Understanding of customer buyer behaviour is important to designing a site and

other communications. Variations in behaviour are discussed later in this chapter.

Customer characteristics

Understanding the nature of customers is fundamental to marketing practice and it is

equally important online. We will see in Chapter 4 on strategy development that tradi-

tional segmentation approaches can be used successfully to understand the range of

audiences. A further technique that can be used as part of situation analysis is customer

scenario and persona analysis which is an online technique for user- or customer-centric

CUSTOMERS

The ES Test was developed by de Kare-Silver (2000) to assess the extent to which consumers are likely

to purchase a retail product using the Internet. De Kare-Silver suggests factors that should be

considered in the ES Test:

1 Product characteristics. Does the product need to be physically tried, or touched, before it is bought?

2 Familiarity and confidence. Considers the degree to which the consumer recognises and trusts the

product and brand.

3 Consumer attributes. These shape the buyer’s behaviour – is he or she amenable to online purchases

(i.e. in terms of access to the technology and skills available) and does he or she no longer wish to

shop for a product in a traditional retail environment? For example, a student familiar with technology

may buy a CD online because they are comfortable with the technology. An elderly person looking for

a classical CD would probably not have access to the technology and might prefer to purchase the

item in person.

In his book, de Kare-Silver describes a method for ranking products. Product characteristics and

familiarity and confidence are marked out of 10, and consumer attributes are marked out of 30. Using

this method, he scores products as shown in Table 2.4.

De Kare-Silver states that any product scoring over 20 has good potential, since the score for

consumer attributes is likely to increase through time. Given this, he suggests companies will regularly

need to review the score for their products.

Mini Case Study 2.1 The Electronic Shopping or ES Test

Table 2.4 Product scores in de Kare-Silver’s (2000) Electronic Shopping (ES) potential test

Product Product characteristics Familiarity and Consumer attributes Total

(10) confidence (10) (30)

1 Groceries 4 8 15 27

2 Mortgages 10 1 4 15

3 Travel 10 6 15 31

4 Books 8 7 23 38