Aides à la Formation-Recherche (AFR) PhD Grant + 7842603

The Internet now plays a crucial role in the consumer journey from information search to e-service. It is therefore important for companies to understand how consumers behave in the online channel. Academic research in this area has tended to be relatively small scale or theoretic in nature. An important, new development is the availability of online panel data that tracks the actual behaviour of millions of online consumers. This ‘big data’, combined with the integration of internal company data (e.g. sales information, web analytics, knowledge and insights from managers, market research and internal documents), provide a rich set of new research opportunities. The research questions are concerned with the nature and extent of the consumer use of tools and technologies for the search process, modelling the factors that influence online behaviour, exploring the differences of the various consumer demographics influencing online behaviour, between market sectors and countries, and mapping out the managerial and academic implications of results. The research methodology will be a mixed methods approach. The outputs of the project will be a Ph.D., a database of six detailed analyses and case studies of online markets in Germany, UK and Luxembourg, academic research papers and industry white papers. The research will be conducted within the institutional frameworks of the University of Muenster, the ERCIS research network, and in close collaboration with the AFR in Luxembourg. The Ph.D. supervision will be provided by Professors Klein and Holland.