Search Engine Consumer Journeys: Exploring and Segmenting Click-Through Behaviors

The consumer online search journey is viewed as one of the key determinants toward consumer purchase decisions. Using a unique disaggregated query-level data set collected from a leading Chinese search engine, we employ a latent-class, two-stage logistic regression model and identify the existence of three distinct consumer segments in the hospitality industry. Each group represents a unique stage of the consumer experience along a typical search journey, leading to a set of click-through behaviors. The consumer search and click-through insights garnered from this study provide hotel marketers with deeper understandings and actionable guidelines to the development of their search advertising campaign and (re)targeting strategies. The segmentation model and the empirical insights also demonstrate the possibility that a segment-specific ad assortment approach could improve advertising efficiency, enrich consumer’s search experience, and eventually create a win-win situation that benefit all entities involved in the hospitality-related, search advertising domain.

Effects of regulatory focus and user perception on search engine advertising avoidance

We examined the effects of promotion and prevention types of regulatory focus and the 3 user perception factors of perceived goal impediment, perceived advertising clutter, and prior negative experience, on search engine advertising (SEA) avoidance. The participants comprised 348 in-service users of the Chinese search engine, Baidu. We found that regulatory focus, perceived goal impediment, perceived advertising clutter, and prior negative experience had a significantly positive effect on SEA avoidance. Moreover, each user perception factor fully mediated the relationship between regulatory focus and SEA avoidance. We also revealed 1 personality antecedent (regulatory focus) of SEA avoidance and examined how it functions. Our findings suggest that advertisers and search engine operators should differentiate between promotion-focused and prevention-focused users, and pay attention to the perceived experience of each user type.

Media attention and corporate disaster relief: evidence from China

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of media attention on corporate disaster relief. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a matched sample research design, which is considered more appropriate than a random sample design for studying events that have low-occurrence rates in general. For each donor firm in the Yushu earthquake, the authors matched the firm with a non-donor firm in the same industry and with a firm size of within ±30 percent of the total assets in the year prior to the year of the occurrence of the Yushu earthquake. Then, using the Baidu engine, which is the most popular Chinese search engine, the authors captured the online media attention to the donor firms and their disaster relief. Findings The authors found that media attention drove corporate disaster relief. Research limitations/implications Although the authors highlighted the role of the media as an important stakeholder in influencing corporate disaster relief, the authors did not fully explore the media’s influence. Future research should delve more deeply into the impact of the tenor of media coverage on corporate disaster relief. Originality/value This study reveals that the media, a particularly powerful stakeholder, can be a corporate disaster relief driver in China.

Research on the Application of Chinese Search Engine

Compared to the high-speed growth number of the Internet users and online Chinese information. The development of Chinese search engine appears relatively lag. This paper takes the interpretation of Chinese search engine as the breakthrough point, by analyzing the working principle of search engine, combined with the analysis of the current Chinese search engine in the page acquisition module, processing module, data retrieval module and data organization module as well as the problems and defects existed in them, trying to search the corresponding improvement strategies.