Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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April 22, 2008

Fuel Watch - Profiling Bargain Hunters Online

The announcement last week of an Australian national scheme that will publish fuel prices online for the next day has highlighted the impact of empowering consumers with time-sensitive information. Quite some time ago I wrote about financial services and information asymmetry, specifically the power of the Internet to shift information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not, and believe that a similar principle applies here.

On the fuel watch debate, Melbourne Business School Professor of Management, Joshua Gans writes in this post, Is Ignorance Good? that there are two kinds of consumers when it comes to purchasing fuel, namely 'fillers' and 'hunters':

"Fillers don't know or have the time to search for the best petrol deals. They fill up when they need to. On the other hand, hunters are shrewd individuals who what to pay less for petrol."

The FuelWatch WA website has been cited as a successful precedent to the nation-wide scheme, so I decided to use our Lifestyle Demographics tool to profile who these 'hunters' might be.

There are two predominant household groups likely to visit FuelWatch WA - Hitwise Lifestyle Mosaic Groups, 'Privileged Prosperity', the most affluent families in the most desirable locations; and 'Family Challenge', mixed families with stretched budgets in outer suburbs. Both 'Privileged Prosperity' and 'Family Challenge' households indexed above 190 in visits to Fuel Watch WA for the 12 weeks ending 12 April 2008.

It's interesting that the households that spend time researching the best petrol deals are from such contrasting socio-economic backgrounds - financial 'smarts' and necessity appears to motivate the bargain hunter. When the national website is launched later this year, we'll see if the audience profile evens out to represent more consumers as some predict, or whether we'll see the same types of households scouting fuel prices online.