Exploring consumer online purchase and search behavior: An FCB grid perspective

Among the various types of online advertising, keyword advertising brings the business to consumers' attention effectively with little effort. Extant studies on consumer search behavior and keyword advertising have paid attention to the relationship between the types of keywords and ad effectiveness. However, we remain unclear about how consumers select keywords in different stages of the purchase and how marketers can best devise advertising strategies in accordance with consumers' online purchase and search behavior. This study focuses on this unexplored issue by conducting a contextual inquiry into consumers’ search and purchase behavior, their selected keywords, and their purchase process across different types of products. We base our inquiry on the “FCB grid” designed by Foote, Cone and Belding Advertising. The results show that consumers follow a certain sequence of stages, depending on the product type, as follows: (1) Learn-Learn-Feel-Do for high involvement and thinking products, (2) Feel-Learn-Do for high involvement and feeling products, (3) Do-Learn-Do for low involvement and thinking products, and (4) Do-Feel-Do stages for low involvement and feeling products. We identify the types of keywords searched in each of these stages. We also develop a planning model for keyword advertising to guide marketers bidding on appropriate keywords for various types of products. This study provides marketers and researchers with a better understanding of consumers' online buying decision process and the keywords that are searched in different stages of the process based on product types and prior product knowledge.