Today’s main topics were: Testing, Databases/Data Mining, Internet Customers, and Customer Behavior on the Net.
The testing process requires us to think about our reason for conducting a test, and then we must design the test to make sure it gives us the information we want. The following steps are executing and monitoring results, analyzing and reporting the test results, then making a marketing decision.
Compnies create huge panels including demographic infomation with opt-in choices to be included in market research studies. You must always worry about bias when you look at the information on the panel.
- Companies get customer data by: purchasing it, census, associations, research firms, purchase history/data, surveys, and *websites*.
Data mining is very useful in keeping all of this information. It is a set of statistical routine that permits pattern detection in large data sets. It gives us a 360 degree view of the data. Data mining is an analysis used to detect patterns in very large data sets (data warehouses).
The hierarchy of customer-focused marketing, from bottom to top follows as: information, interaction, transaction, personalization, customization.
The stages of Internet consumer behavior are: Awareness, Search Behavior, Task Completion, Repeat Visit, Use & Consumption Behavior and Loyalty.
Awareness- Begins with the consumer becoming aware that content or products can be obtained via the Internet.
Search Behavior
Goal Oriented – search behavior, in which the user has an objective of some kind. The objectives may be task completion which is the desire to accomplish a specified task or complete a specific activity. Or prepurchase deliberation where the user engages in information search related to a specific product.
Experiential – Search behavior is where activities are not task-oriented but are guided by the process itself. Build information bank, in which the user accumulates information for long-term use. Opinion leadership, in which the user searches for information that will be used in her role as an opinion leader. Recreation, in which the user finds entertainment in using the computer to search our new information of activities.
Task Completion- (Content/Information Acquisition, Purchase, Abandonment) On the internet, it is reasonable to define one successful outcome of the consumer behavior process as acquiring information, whereas in the physical world, we define it only as a purchase. Abandonment of virtual shopping carts may occur because of shipping costs or difficulty to navigate through the site.
Repeat Visit Purchase Versus Search– (Occasional or Frequent)
Use and Consumption Behavior- Purchase is followed by product use or consumption behavior, whether it is a tangible product, an intangible service, or a piece of information.
Loyalty- most often measured by repeat purchases in the physical world. We can add frequent visits to the site in Internet space as a behavioral measure of loyalty.
The stages that come after “Purchase” is important because it determines if the customer will become a loyal customer and engage in repeat transactions.