Page 93 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M02_CHAF9601_04_SE_C02.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:07 Page 60

60 Part 1 Introduction

2 Search 3 Intermediaries 4 Destination
1 Customer Different search types: intermediaries and media sites sites
segments A: Search flows natural and paid
• Generic search
• Product-specific search
Different customer • Brand search Search engines Horizontal portals Company site
segments with or mainstream
specific needs media
Google
OVPs

Create personas
Yahoo!
for key audiences Live
Ask Niche media
sites or
social networks
Existing vs new
Other
Direct
search competitors
networks
Web savvy OVPs
Non-web savvy
Vertical Aggregators
Search and
Demographic engines super-affiliates
segmentation
Specialist
Lifecycle directories In-direct
segmentation competitors
Small-affiliates
and blogs
Purpose of mapping is to identify: OVPs
Psychographic • Main marketspace actors
segmentation • Their relative importance B: Intermediary flows OVPs =
• Relative visibility in marketplace to different types of Online value
given different customer journeys intermediary propositions

Figure 2.3 An online marketplace map

The main elements of the online marketplace map presented in Figure 2.3 are:

1 Customer segments.
The marketplace analysis should identify and summarize different target segments for an
online business in order to then understand their online media consumption, buyer
behaviour and the type of content and experiences they will be looking for from inter-
mediaries and your web site.
2 Search intermediaries.
These are the main search engines in each country. Typically they are Google, Yahoo!,
Microsoft Live Search and Ask, but others are important in some markets such as China
(Baidu), Russia (Yandex) and South Korea (Naver). You can use audience panel data from
different providers indicated in Box 2.1 to find out their relative importance in different
countries. The Google Trends tool (Figure 2.4) is a free tool for assessing site popularity
and the searches used to find sites and how they vary seasonally, which is useful for
student assignments.