Search Engine Preference Lets Wunderman See Users Hand

Is your favorite search engine a “tell” to what your shopping habits and brand preferences are? According to a recent study by a collective of marketing agencies, Wunderman, BrandAsset Consulting, Zaaz, and Compete, what you type into your browser’s address bar says a whole lot about you and your personal habits.

As a Microsoft agency partner, Wunderman’s research has a definite preferential tone. Regardless it provides interesting observations toward users personal habits. The study also broke down certain market verticals, like travel (shown below), separating the users into three types: visitors, shoppers, converters.

Based on that data Wunderman compiled the following assumptions can be made about the users of these different search engines when it comes to automotive, travel, retail, and wireless:

• Google: users tend to gravitate to Target and Amazon for shopping. Other characteristics included leading conversion for services like Hotwire, a preference for JetBlue, and a propensity towards a Lexus. Oddly enough, Google users were described in the study as the average Internet Joe – conventional but open to new ideas.
• Yahoo!: users were described as older, and lacking in imagination, with a strong preference for Sprint and AT&T over Verizon and T-Mobile. They were also considered to be skeptical and cautious of new or untried ideas.
• Bing: users were called the early adopters of technology and innovators. They were more likely to shop at Wal-Mart and Toyota was their automobile of choice. The report also described them as middle-aged, highly educated, tech-savvy individuals who considered themselves to be average and spent more than 10 hours a week online.
• AOL: users felt less intellectual than their peers, are often 55 and or older, spend their money more conservatively, want to blend in with the crowd, feel like they’ve gotten a raw deal out of life, expect less from their future, and still use a dial-up modem.

So what does this mean for marketers? David Sable, vice chairman and COO of Wunderman explained it by stating that, “Search begins with the choice of search engine. What this means if you are managing a brand is this: you need to know how consumers relate to Bing, Yahoo! or Google and how that reflects on you.”

To me, it’s no surprise that Wunderman would hold Bing users in such high esteem. Calling them the early adopters and most tech-savvy of the group lends to their audience being perceived as fearless when it comes to Internet shopping. Sans the finding that Google users tend to prefer Amazon, the other three search engines were made to look like their users are hesitant to make online purchases. Adjectives like conventional (brick and mortar), skeptical and cautious (afraid), responsible spenders (bargain shopping) plant the seeds of doubt when it comes to marketing through these channels.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sable’s comments, and I would like to think that the study holds some merit, however I can’t help but feel it would be more effective had it not involved a firm influenced by any of the search engines involved.