February 26th, 2008 by Sten Franke
The most recent survey concerning the issue of automobiles on Web 2.0: Cars Online 07/08, which was conducted by the management consultancy Capgemeni, underlines the results of ethority’s forerunner survey. Already at the beginning of 2007, ethority was able to expose trends on Web 2.0, which were also established by Capgemini’s market survey. At this, the subject matter for investigation was the consumer behaviour regarding the issue of automobile on the Web. The fact that the users’ focus was directed towards green issues in the field of automobiles was especially noticeable. Here, it was particularly interesting for the users to learn more about petrol-saving cars and alternative automobile engines on the web. Moreover, the market researchers of Capgemeni were able to demonstrate that the tools of Web 2.0, such as online communities concerning the issue of automobiles, are becoming more popular among the users. Within the statistic investigation on Web 2.0, these tools constituted the main unit of ethority’s survey concerning the field of automobiles. ethority analyzed 23.289 user comments in weblogs and online communities of the consumer generated web, surveying comments which originated from 10 selected online communities. Two criteria of relevance constituted the basis of the investigation. The first selection criterion was the minimum occurrence of sector or topic specific terms in online communities, while the second criterion referred to the posting frequency of the individual members in their respective community. The higher this specific posting frequency, the higher was the online community’s relevance for ethority’s survey. The content analysis was carried out by the most efficient evaluation software for webmonitoring: gridmaster. Applying a qualitative analysis, the data calculated by this means was post-processed by the ethority research team according to code book. The investigation followed one basic principle: which topics are discussed on Web 2.0 in which ways and with which tendencies. The primary result of this analysis was an extensive image of consumer opinions and of the consequential demand placed on the market researchers of the automobile industry. As the analyses conducted by ethority and Capgemini have clearly shown, the car manufacturers should focus their market research to a higher degree on the given factors of the novel C2C tools, such as online communities.
>> ethority automobile survey
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