that these types of tools provide an incredible opportunity to understand customer
search behaviour together with assessing a company’s success in reaching these cus-
tomers searching online. Through evaluating the volume of phrases used to search for
products in a given market it is possible to calculate the total potential opportunity and
the current share of search terms for a company. ‘Share of search’ can be determined
from web analytics reports from the company site which indicate the precise key phrases
used by visitors to actually reach a site from different search engines. We explore the
techniques of search engine marketing in more detail in Chapter 8.3 Purchased online
The proportion of Internet users who will purchase different types of product online will
vary dramatically according to product type, as we saw at the start of Chapter 1. The
propensity to purchase online is dependent on different variables over which the mar-
keter has relatively little control. However, factors which affect the propensity to
purchase can be estimated for different types of products. De Kare-Silver (2000) devel-
oped a framework known as The Electronic Shopping Test in which he suggests that theCHAPTER 2· THE INTERNET MICRO-ENVIRONMENT
Figure 2.18The most popular search terms typed into a search engine that resulted in
traffic to http://www.ba.com, four weeks ending 18.03.06
Source: Hitwise (www.hitwise.co.uk)Current
successful
generic
product
search
termsCurrent
successful
specific
product
search
termsCurrent
successful
brand
search
termsRank Search Term Search Engine Volume- british airways View Engines 24.65%
- ba View Engines 10.64%
- ba.com View Engines 7.58%
- http://www.ba.com View Engines 3.19%
- britishairways View Engines 1.18%
- ba connect View Engines 1.09%
- ba flights View Engines 0.87%
- my.bapic.com View Engines 0.75%
- flights View Engines 0.65%
- british airways flights View Engines 0.60%
- http://www.britishairways.com View Engines 0.59%
- http://www.ba.co.uk View Engines 0.58%
- cheap flights View Engines 0.50%
- british airways.com View Engines 0.41%
- http://www.britishairways.co.uk View Engines 0.30%
- britishairways.com View Engines 0.27%
- baconnect View Engines 0.25%
- my.baplc View Engines 0.22%
- flights to malta View Engines 0.21%
- flights to new york View Engines 0.16%
- british airways executive club View Engines 0.16%
- ba com View Engines 0.15%
- http://www.my.baplc.com View Engines 0.15%
- ba.com/northamerica View Engines 0.15%
- british airways View Engines 0.14%
Share of search
The audience share of
Internet searchers
achieved by a particular
audience in a particular
market.