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202 Part 1 Introduction

Cars 69
Garden/DIY products 63
Home furnishings 62

Mobile phones 58
Large home appliances 57
Consumer electronics 57
PC/Computer hardware 54

Small home appliances 53
Clothing/accessories 53
Health and beauty products 51

Computer games 44
Financial products or services 40
Food/groceries 39

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
% (by category) who bought offline after researching online

Percentage by category who bought offline after researching online
Figure 4.3 Source: BrandNewWorld: AOL UK / Anne Molen (Cranfield School of Management) /
Henley Centre, 2004

Motivation for use of online services
Another way for organizations to help them better understand their online customers is for
Psychographic marketers to develop psychographic segmentations which help explain motivation. Special-
segmentation ized psychodemographic profiles have been developed for web users, for example see Box 4.1
A breakdown of
customers according to for an example of this type of segmentation applied to online purchase behaviour. Which
different characteristics. profile do you fit?

Box 4.1 Psychographic segmentation for transactional e-commerce

Market research firm BMRB (2004) has developed this segmentation which is used to
represent different attitudes to purchasing online.

1 Realistic enthusiasts (14% 2004, 15% 1999) – characterized by an enthusiastic
approach toward e-commerce but they typically like to see the product in real life
before making a purchase and they often consider that finding the product to
purchase is a difficult process. Examples of this include a willingness to use the
Internet for purchases in excess of £500, they are prepared to purchase products
from an unknown company and consider the convenience of Internet shopping to
be more important than price.
2 Confident brand shoppers (18% 2004, 16% 1999) – members of this group are
happy to use the Internet for the next time they want to make a purchase in excess