'Share of Search' as metric: Flipkart vs. Amazon

Over on marketing twitter I've been following discussions on the relevance of 'Share of Search' as a metric for measuring marketing effectiveness, and whether it is a good replacement for 'Share of Voice' which is increasingly difficult to measure over digital media.

Recent news of Flipkart overtaking Amazon during the sales season seemed like a good time to see how well share of search might be tracking the business overall.

As per Inc42 (1) quoting Redseer consulting, Flipkart outperformed Amazon almost 2:1 during the week of Oct 16-21, when it was running it's Big Billion Day sale.

It goes on to show how shoppers from Tier 2 markets have grow faster (2.3x YoY) vs. Metro (1.5x) and Tier 1 (1.4x), becoming 57% of all shoppers vs. 45-50% a year ago. They suggest that Flipkart may have performed better in Tier 2 markets.

Let's see what google search trends tells us about the same story.

First - the broad trend. (Note: Amazon is in red and Flipkart in blue throughout)

Google search does indeed reflect the same pattern quoted by RedSeer, with Flipkart overtaking Amazon sharply in the 2 weekly data points that coincide with the Big Billion days sale.

The difference in volumes however is not 100:50 but around 100:80. This could be a reflection of many things, such as category mix (Flipkart is stronger in the higher GMV per unit category of Mobiles) as well as comparative shopping. But clearly, Flipkart seems to be doing relatively better this year vs. Amazon than years past.

What's even more interesting, however, is looking at the geographical distribution of the searches between them. Here is the relative strength / weakness of Flipkart vs. Amazon (in search interest) depicted on the map by Google for 2020.

Fascinating.

The red regions / cities here are where Amazon has more searches than Flipkart, and blue is the reverse.

Flipkart is clearly outperforming in a cluster of eastern states / cities. We typically recognize these as lower on development, affluence & english speaking.

What could explain it? If we assume for the moment that ability to service is on par, then some combination of brand/marketing/adoption, product/app (language, perhaps?) and assortment/pricing is clicking much more for Flipkart in these states.

I still find it remarkable that an established, nationwide online service has such a distinct, physically contiguous area of relative strength. The difference in Tier 1/2 cities quoted by Redseer could be a tier thing, or could be a function of these states themselves not having as many Tier 1 cities.

Coming back to share of search - My experience is that it is definitely a valuable way of understanding and comparing company position & performance, with caveats that it is not an exact mirror.. of anything. But in itself it throws up valid insights, over time and across companies.

p.s. - As parting food for thought - this is what the map looked like just for the month of October:

References:

1. Inc42: https://inc42.com/buzz/flipkart-topples-amazon-in-first-week-of-festive-sale/
2. Google trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2020-01-01%202020-11-03&geo=IN&q=flipkart,Amazon