Introduction

Digital consumer behaviour is one of the most important metrics that any modern marketer can measure—but we’ve noticed that people are often getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools and metrics out there. After all, everyone claims their method (and their method alone) is groundbreaking. This is what you really need to know, and why you should care:

What is digital behaviour? 

Digital consumer behaviour, in terms of marketing research, essentially boils down to anything that a person does online. What devices they use, the sites they visit, the ads they engage with, the pages they navigate to, when they leave and how, and so on. If a customer clicks on something, it is recorded—and sometimes even when they don't click on something.

How is it measured?

There are a number of different ways that digital consumer behaviour is recorded, but easily the most common is through cookies. These are small units of code that exist within the software written to create the page that the consumer is visiting.

These cookies come in a wide variety of 'flavours', but all work in much the same way. They allow you to first-party data (which is collected from your website, digital campaigns, app users, etc) and third-party data (data points gathered from across the web) so you can understand the type of content that your audience engages with online. This allows you to build and segment unique audiences, so you can gain the right insights to understand what larger groups they may be a part of—and how likely you are to find them with your current content.

Cookies are certainly not the only way to track digital consumer behaviour, however. It can also be tracked through session IDs, caches, social information and some new technologies that can link users even when they are outside of a single session.

Why should you care about it?

There’s one simple reason why digital behaviour matters: data. Unbiased, unbridled, unbelievably large levels of accurate consumer data.

Consider the following: our partners at Lotame tell us that there are over 12 million digital devices tagged in New Zealand. That’s almost three for every single man, woman and child in the country. Almost half of all Kiwis spend at least three hours online every single day. And what are they doing with all that time online? According to one survey from the US, they are purchasing and researching products on the net, now more than ever before.

The world has changed. Humans are now digital creatures, and traditional market research methods have a hard time capturing the kinds of behaviour you need to know. Once upon a time, you could simply watch consumers walk around a physical store, record what they bought and when, and that might be enough. But with more and more people heading to the online world for their purchases, we need to be able to track these online behaviours to get the data we need to improve their experience—and our bottom lines.

Such a huge amount of data shouldn’t go to waste, and the digital nature of these new market research methods make it easy to capture, manage and analyse this information—assuming you have the right analytical team on board to help you make sense of the data. As a result, digital consumer behaviour can be used to uncover important customer segments. Want to be agile? Then digital marketing behaviour analysis should be a primary part of your toolbox.

Models of online buyer behaviour

Standard models of consumer buyer behaviour have been developed by Bettman (1979) and Booms and Bitner (1981). In these models, consumers process marketing stimuli such as the 4 Ps and environmental stimuli according to their personal characteristics such as their culture, social group and personal and psychological make-up. Together these characteristics will affect the consumers’ response to marketing messages. For the Internet marketer, a review of the factors influencing behaviour is especially important since a single web site may need to accommodate consumers with different needs at different stages of the buying process. Users will also have different levels of experience of using the web. Specific behavioural traits are evident on the Internet. Studies show that the World Wide Web is used quite differently by different groups of people. Lewis and Lewis (1997) identified five different types of web users or rather modes of usage of the Internet which remain valid today:

1) Directed information-seekers

These users will be looking for product, market or leisure information such as details of their football club’s fixtures. They are not typically planning to buy online.

2) Undirected information-seekers 

These are the users, usually referred to as ‘surfers’, who like to browse and change sites by following hyperlinks. Members of this group tend to be novice users (but not exclusively so) and they may be more likely to click on banner advertisements.

3) Directed buyers

These buyers are online to purchase specific products online. For such users, brokers or cybermediaries that compare product features and prices will be important locations to visit.

4) Bargain hunters

These users (sometimes known as ‘compers’) want to find the offers available from sales promotions such as free samples or competitions. For example, the MyOffers site (www.myoffers.co.uk) is used by many brands to generate awareness and interest from consumers.

5) Entertainment seekers

These are users looking to interact with the Web for enjoyment through entering contests such as quizzes, puzzles or interactive multi-player games.

Styler (2001) describes four consumer buying behaviours derived from in-depth home interviews researching behaviour across a range of media, including the Internet. These behaviours are brand-focused, price-sensitive, feature-savvy and advice-led. As Moe (2003) has pointed out, in the bricks-and-mortar environment, stores employ sales people who can distinguish between shoppers based on their in-store behaviour. Some shoppers appear to be very focused in looking for a specific product. In those cases, sales people may try to help the shopper find what they are looking for. In other cases, the shopper is just browsing ‘window shopping’. The experienced sales person can identify these shoppers and either ignore them and let them continue or can try to stimulate a purchase. Although there is no sales person to perform this role online, Moe and Fader (2004) believe that through analysing clickstream behaviour and patterns of repeated visits, it may be possible to identify directed buying, browsing or searching behaviour and make prompts accordingly online.

In a report on benchmarking the user experience of UK retail sites, E-consultancy (2004) identified a useful classification of online shopping behaviour to test how well web site design matches different consumer behaviours. In a similar way to previous studies, three types of potential behaviour were identified which are trackers, hunters and explorers. Note that these do not equate to different people, since according to the type of product or occasion, the behaviour of an individual may differ. Indeed, as they research a product they are likely to become more directed.

1. Tracker

Knows exactly which product they wish to buy and uses an online shopping site to track it down and check its price, availability, delivery time, delivery charges or after-sales support. 

That is, the tracker is looking for specific information about a particular product. The report says:

If they get the answers they are seeking they need little further persuasion or purchase justification before completing the purchase.

While this may not be true since they may compare on other sites, this type of shopper will be relatively easy to convert.

2. Hunter

Doesn’t have a specific product in mind but knows what type of product they are looking for (e.g. digital camera, cooker) and probably has one or more product features they are looking for. The hunter uses an online shopping site to find a range of suitable products, compare them and decide which one to buy. The hunter needs more help, support and guidance to reach a purchasing decision.

The report says:

Once a potential purchase is found, they then need to justify that purchase in their own minds, and possibly to justify their purchase to others. Only then will confirmation of the purchase become a possibility.

3. Explorer

Doesn’t even have a particular type of product in mind. They may have a well-defined shopping objective (buying a present for someone or treating themselves), a less-resolved shopping objective (buying something to ‘brighten up’ the lounge) or no shopping objective at all (they like the High Street store and thought they would have a look at the online site).

The report suggests that the explorer has a range of possible needs and many uncertainties to be resolved before committing to purchase, but the following may be helpful in persuading these shoppers to convert:

Certain types of information, however, are particularly relevant. Suggested gift ideas, guides to product categories, lists of top selling products and information-rich promotions (What’s New? What’s Hot?) – these could all propel them towards a purchasing decision.

From this brief review of online buyer behaviours, we can suggest that online marketers need to take into account the range of behaviours shown in table below both when developing an Internet marketing strategy and when executing it through site design.

Hierarchy of response models

An alternative view of consumer behaviour in using the Internet during the buying process relates to the well-documented ‘hierarchy of response model’, summarised for example by Kotler et al. (2001), as made up of the following stages:

•  awareness;

•  interest;

•  evaluation;

•  trial;

•  adoption.

Breitenbach and van Doren (1998) also suggest that audience members of an individual web site tend to pass through these stages. Figure below indicates how the Internet can be used to support the different stages in the buying process. The boxes on the left show the typical stages that a new prospect passes through, according to, for example, Robinson et al. (1967). A similar analysis was performed by Berthon et al. (1998), who speculated that the relative communications effectiveness of using a web site in this process gradually increased from 1 to 6.

It is worthwhile reviewing each of the stages in the buying process referred to in Figure 2.23 in order to highlight how effective the Internet can be when used at different stages to support the marketing communications objectives. Of course, the exact stage of the buying decision varies for different products and different types of customers, so an alternative approach is to develop channel chains (Figure 2.10) which reflect these differences. In general, digital media support the consumer buying process as follows.

1. Consumer unaware. Company: generates awareness (of need, product or service)

Generating awareness of need is conventionally achieved principally through the mass media used in offline advertising. The Internet is relatively ineffective at this since it tends to have a more limited impact and reach than television, radio or print media. However, display advertising or paid search marketing can be used to supplement offline awareness-building as explained in Chapter 8. Some companies such as Zopa (see Case Study 2 below) have effectively developed brand awareness by means of PR and media mentions concerning their success on the Internet, with the result that even if a customer does not have a current need for a product, that customer may be aware of the source when the need develops. Examples of e-businesses that have developed a wellknown brand include Amazon for books, Dell for computers, CDWOW for music, Microsoft Expedia for Holidays and AutoByTel for cars. In more specialised business-tobusiness

sectors it may also be possible for a company to establish a reputation as a preferred web site as a source of expertise in its sector (for example, www.siebel.com for CRM and www.tektronix.com for test and measurement).

2. Consumer: aware of need, develops specification. Company: position features, benefits and brand

Once a consumer is aware of a need and is considering what features and benefits he or she requires from a product, then they may turn straight to the web to start identifyingthe range of features available from a particular type of product through using a genericsearch. Online, search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! are important at this stage and effectively increase comparison at an early stage in the buying processes. Specification development effectively happens at the same time as supplier search and more suppliers can be evaluated in greater depth than traditionally. For example, Figure 2.24 shows e-retailers available in paid search for an initial product search on fridges. Retailers such as Comet are displayed in the natural listings (see Chapter 8) while others such as Tesco are displayed in the sponsored links. Intermediaries well known within a sector are very important in supplier search and can also help in evaluation. For example, Shopgenie (www.shopgenie.co.uk) in the example in Figure 2.24 or CNET (www.computers.com) provides detailed information and reviews on computers to help consumers make the choice. The prospect will likely also click through to destination sites to find out about, for example, features available in a digital television or characteristics of a place to go on holiday. If a company is fortunate enough to achieve interest at this point, then it has an early opportunity to enter a dialogue with a customer and build the product’s brand and generate a lead. 

3. Consumer: supplier search. Company: generate leads (engage and capture interest)

Once customers are actively searching for products (the directed information-seeker of Lewis and Lewis, 1997), the web provides an excellent medium to help them do this. It also provides a good opportunity for companies to describe the benefits of their web sites and obtain qualified leads. The Internet marketer must consider the methods that a