Look to past insight for World Cup glory

Consumer behaviour changes and fresh research is important to ensure brands continue to understand audiences and trends, but some past research into consumers’ general behaviour could prove useful today. 

For brands planning World Cup activity, insight into consumer behaviour during past sporting events could be used to steer strategy.   

Research released by eBay looking at data from 2012 reveals the opportunities available to brands to capitalise on the halo effect of the World Cup.   

Customer data in the run up to the UEFA European Championships 2012 shows a 20 per cent increase in the number of searches for wide screen TVs on eBay, compared to May and June 2013.     

By looking at previous insight that brands and companies have completed means putting that original research spend to further use. Running comparative studies year-on-year has obvious benefits, but extending that to looking at other research in the archives relating to events or certain products could also prove valuable.   

Many games during the World Cup are kicking off at 11pm GMT and eBay predicts there will be a rise in late night shoppers, suggesting brands could extend or have campaigns running later in the day. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean all campaigns have to be sports or World Cup related. During England’s defeat to Italy during Euro 2012 there were 4,000 searches for football shirts on eBay, but there were also nearly 35,000 searches for handbags and over 50,000 searches for sofas.  

It’s important to look deeper into the trends in what customers are doing, learn from past behaviour and in terms of marketing during sports seasons to identify the need to segment fans from non-fans to ensure any advertising spend is targeted, based on insight. 

With ITV predicting a 13 per cent jump in Word Cup ad revenue, brands will want to make sure any ad spend stands out and is worth it.