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Mary

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Formerly, during the canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church,

In a recent survey of in-market travelers, 78% identified the Internet as their single most important source of travel information. Consequently, we see using online research as a proxy for travel demand as being highly accurate and effective.

Regional market demand has been measured by research sessions on airline carrier websites. As you mention, Southwest Airlines has performed well due in part to its ongoing online success.

Your post just read to me as though the analysis showed people in certain areas were purposefully searching for Southwest, rather than responding to Southwest’s marketing messages. As I understand it, your data represents Traffic, not Brand Search Criteria.

My point was that people aren’t necessarily researching FOR Southwest Airlines, but rather finding, and clicking through to, Southwest because of their efforts - something I believe your data demonstrates.

I’m not sure you’re capturing or quantifying natural demand here with your Southwest example.

Are you aware that Southwest invests in considerable search engine optimization for even their press releases so that they end up in the top of search results for anything having to do with Low Cost Travel. The other airlines are not nearly so clever.

Or have you some other way to determine that their share of site traffic was true “demand” for researching Southwest?

Take a look at the differences in the Organic and Paid keyword searches by airline, or estimates of their on-line ad spends, and it gives you some additional “explanations” of the site traffic besides “demand”.