Google has launched its latest Consumer Barometer planning tool, letting marketers monitor consumer media and shopping habits across 46 countries.
The free tool lets users download customised data and market-specific information.
These can help users discover anything from: how often people go online, to how many connected devices they may have, how people research and purchase online, the influence of online video on their shopping habits or the differences between generations and their online behaviour.
Vertical sectors currently profiled within the Barometer include: clothing and footwear, home appliances, flights, hotels, cosmetics and groceries. New vertical sectors will be added on an ongoing basis as Google extends the insights.
For example, the latest data insights for the UK are:
• Internet users in the UK are the most likely in Europe to have only researched their last purchase online – 28% did so on average across 10 product categories compared with 18% across Europe.
• Consumers are most likely to buy groceries online, with 16% of UK consumers doing so compared to just 3% in Europe.
• Smartphones are now a significant way for people in the UK to do product research online – particularly for the younger generations. 38% of under 24s researching purchases online in the UK used smartphones, compared to an average of 21% across all age groups.
Peter Cory, Agency Sales Director at Google, said: “People now use digital media for a huge array of purposes but it isn’t always easy to tell what channels and activities are the most effective, particularly if you’re dealing with multiple markets and products. Our latest Consumer Barometer captures a vast array of new consumer research and enables anyone to easily explore how consumers are behaving in this brave new digital world.”
Welcoming the latest consumer insights from Consumer Barometer 2014, Chris Binns, Managing Partner and Joint Head of Planning at Mediacom, said: “Being able to unpick the relationship between consumers’ online and offline behaviour and compare insights across different countries and categories is becoming increasingly important to planners. The new Google Consumer Barometer offers vast sample sizes and complete data sets for a huge range of markets – a level of detail I’ve never seen before. The fact this is all available for free in a simple-to-use format means it will certainly play a valuable role in Mediacom’s planning going forward.”
The content of the Barometer is based on two research studies conducted during 2014 in over 50 different countries, involving over 150,000 respondents
The new Consumer Barometer was designed by Hive, a London-based digital products and services design studio. Hive interviewed different types of users for months, and learned from their interaction with each new iteration.
www.consumerbarometer.com