December 19th, 2004

When searching for product, 70% search for generic product name, 20% for brand names

Posted by ZDNet Research @ 9:30 pm

Categories: E-commerce

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Most people conducting an on-line search for electronics and computer products use generic terms rather than trade marked retailer or branded products terms, according to comScore Networks study sponsored by Overture (a Yahoo! property). 85% of searchers conduct additional searches later in the shopping process, but the majority of consumers continue to use the same search term type (either generic or branded) with which they began the search process. 83% of consumers start their search process with a generic term and only a relatively small percentage later search using a product-specific term, on-line retailers or manufacturers that invest solely in product-specific keywords will miss more than 80% of consumer electronics or computer (CE/C) searchers.

Generic product search terms accounted for more than 70% of total search volume, while trade marked retailer terms such as Best Buy or Gateway.com accounted for 20% and specific product terms, such as Canon digital camcorder accounted for 10%. While generic terms accounted for the majority of purchase conversion (61%), branded terms (either retailer or product terms) were approximately 30% more likely to result in an on-line purchase.

25% of searchers ultimately purchased a CE/C product and that an estimated 92% of these purchases occurred off-line. Among the 8% of post-search purchases that were made on-line, the vast majority occurred in subsequent user sessions, and not directly after a search click-through. 15% of on-line purchases following a CE/C search occurred in the same user session as the search itself, with 85% of conversions occurring in a latent (or non-search) session. Additionally, nearly 40% of all purchases occurred five to 12 weeks after the initial CE/C search was conducted.