In June of 2004, Enquiro and MarketingSherpa agreed to create a survey to provide insight in how search might be used on business to business transactions. These are obviously distinct in a number of ways from typical consumer interactions. First, they generally happen at work. Secondly, they tend to have multiple people involved in the decision. Often one person is assigned with the task of gathering information and then reports back to a group that makes the final decision. Finally, there is a more rigorous budgeting process that accompanies a business to business purchase decision. For all these reasons, we suspected that search would play an important role.

We were right.

As with almost all consumer decisions, search does play a critical role. The overwhelming majority of respondents (93.4%) indicated that they would use the Internet to research a business to business purchase decision. Most of these (63.9%) indicated that a search engine would be the first place they would turn. With the sheer numbers of business consumers turning to search, it’s vital that marketers have a better understanding of how search is used.

HOME | CONTACT US | SITEMAP