Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #566466 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

Lessons in Learning How to Use Online Data for Market Research

Like many people who do market research, Bill Tancer loves data. He is also curious when tracking clicks on the Internet show trends that don't make a lot of surface sense . . . such as when searches for prom dresses zoomed in January. In this book, he gives examples of how measuring online activity can give you clues to seasonality, how other media affect Internet behavior, how fads can be tracked and anticipated, and who will win votes and popularity contests.

The book is really about competitive intelligence, the vantage point that Mr. Tancer has as general manager at online competitive intelligence firm Hitwise. That's the book's weakness from two perspectives:

1. Mr. Tancer knows very little about market research (and sometimes little about the subjects he studies) so he has trouble getting past the noise to the cause-and-effect relationships.

2. He's very anxious for you to know what his firm does (it's a sort of long infomercial).

Unless you really want to learn about online competitive intelligence as done by Hitwise, you can skip this book.