Not long ago, I bought a brand new 46” LCD HDTV just in time for football season so I could see every individual blade of grass swoosh by as my beloved Patriots went for touchdown after touchdown. And then… well, you all know what I’m talking about, so I don’t need to repeat it here.

Still, football season has just begun and I still have an HDTV hanging on the wall. So to keep my mind off Brady and the Pats, I decided to focus on the TV itself, wondering if my (somewhat impulsive) shopping patterns were typical of other consumers out there.

In terms of shopping, it appears that most people aren’t looking for TVs during the pre-season like I did, but are waiting until the promotion-filled holiday period and just in time for SuperBowl Sunday. The chart below shows last year’s interest in HDTVs at two of the top consumer electronics websites.

• Interest remained pretty flat throughout fall 2007, then spiked during the holidays. This type of jump is expected, but HDTVs sustained some of that interest through January and into early February - the Super Bowl was on Feb 3rd.
• The last two weeks of January generated a bump in interest for both companies as consumers prepared to get a new TV for the big game. Best Buy interest increased 16%, while Circuit City’s increased 43%

Now I only really considered two HDTV brands, Sony and Samsung, both because I’ve had good experiences with other products of theirs in the past. This type of halo effect is interesting, and I wanted to figure out if consumers mainly think about these companies in terms of TVs or other products. Below is a chart of the percentage of search referrals to each company’s website where the searcher used TV-related terms (HDTV, DVR, etc). I compared fall 2007 with holiday 2007 to get a sense if consumers’ search behavior changes from season to season.

• In September 2007, 5.5% of Samsung’s search referrals came from TV-related terms, as compared to 4.4% for Sony. This means that the vast majority of searchers weren’t necessarily looking for TVs on either site; Samsung visitors searched mostly for mobile phone-related items, Sony’s tended to look for laptops.
• Despite a large increase in shopper interest from the fall to the holiday period that was reflected in the first chart, the percentage of searchers looking for TVs on these two sites actually decreased heading into the holiday season

This tells me that there really could be a halo effect for both of these companies. Good experiences with one product that Samsung (or Sony) makes could lead to increased mindshare for another.

This presents an opportunity for companies that manufacture multiple categories of products to cross-promote and upsell products to increase consideration and mindshare among consumers that already have a favorable impression of the brand. On Tuesday, Jim Nail of Cymfony actually talked about the importance of social media on consumer mindshare in an ARF webcast . Playback is free for ARF members.

And as for football season? I’ll still spend most Sundays on the couch rooting for the Pats, hoping that lightning can strike again with Matt Cassel as it did originally with Tom Brady in 2001. And no matter what happens, I’ll be watching every tiny detail of it in 1080p, with 120Hz refresh rate and SRS TruSurround XT audio. Gotta love technology.

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