MARKET INTELLIGENCE FROM THE INTERNET: AN ILLUSTRATION USING THE BIOMASS HEATING INDUSTRY

Year 2019, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 1 - 16, 17.06.2019

Adee Athiyaman Thebe Magapa

https://doi.org/10.34109/ijefs.201911101

Cited By: 13

Abstract

Extant research on marketing strategy suggests that most companies underuse web
intelligence as publicly available data on the Internet are considered hard to access
and analyse. This paper demonstrates how biomass home heating businesses can
utilise the Internet for data collection and business insights. The market structure
of the biomass heating industry was identified using the Google Correlate
algorithm. The production rule ‘that newer the product the higher is consumer
search for the product’ was operationalised using the correlations of the concept
‘home heating equipment’. Intra-industry competition was assessed using
Google’s brand impression analysis and firm behaviour and performance were
modelled using a differential equation relating product sales to marketing
expenditures. Empirical analysis reveals that the product form “biomass home
heating” is growing, pellet stoves and fireplace inserts top the lists of “stove”
searches, there are two competitive clusters of biomass firms and the marketing
spending for the industry is well below its optimum level needed to increase and
maintain sales.
Keywords: Market intelligence, Biomass home heating, US biomass markets,
Marketing optimisation, Google tools

Keywords

Market intelligence, Biomass home heating, US biomass markets, Marketing optimisation, Google tools

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