Abstract:

How people find a company or product brand on the Internet is a major question if one intends to use the Internet to build brand awareness, perception and loyalty. In order to find an answer to this question, a study was conducted among a large sample of European Internet users in November 2000, asking about their search behavior and patterns. The study concluded that there are four ways of searching for information on the Internet that differ strongly per product category. Based on these results strong recommendations were given to several companies to adapt their online branding strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of branding efforts.