V-Enable, a voice-enabled mobile 411 system, conducted a study by taking a random sampling of 20,000 searches in major metropolitan areas from customers of several V-Enable partner carriers including Alltel and MetroPCS. The findings clearly represent interesting trends caused by the recession. For one thing, people are eating more pizza! The results for the top restaurant searches for the period between October 2007 and June 2008 are:
1. Pizza Hut
2. McDonald’s
3. Domino’s Pizza
4. Starbucks
5. Papa John’s Pizza
6. Little Caesars Pizza
7. Taco Bell
8. Burger King
9. Wendy’s
10. Denny’s
Sit-down restaurants like Olive Garden, Applebee’s and Red Lobster, have dropped off the list, while recession-proof comfort food like Pizza Hut and Domino’s shoot to the top of the list. 380% more searches for Pizza Hut have been conducted during the period, and searches for Domino’s Pizza have increased 980%. High gas prices are keeping people at home ordering in, and they are opting for cheaper alternatives. Financial analysts have explored this area extensively, and have deemed several of these restaurant chains “recession-proof stocks.”
There are several other search-related economic indicators from V-Enable. U-Haul, a company that was never on any top 50 list, jumped to #23 in general search, possibly because of a rise in foreclosures. Macy’s dropped from #17 to #49 in retail, a direct correlation to the fact that people just don’t have the discretionary income that they used to. Motel 6 has never showed up on a top 50 list, but they are now #37 in general search, quite possibly because travelers can’t afford the costly alternatives. Mobile search happens in real-time and is unaffected by SEO, making these statistics arguably more reflective of consumer sentiment than web search.
V-Enable is a mobile information system, where users can speak the name of a restaurant or residential listing and receive location and contact information. The company also has live operators working behind the scenes so that users can call and get human assistance, if necessary. V-Enable sent us similar retail statistics in December. The company is backed by $10.1 million over 3 rounds from Siemens Mobile Acceleration Corporation, Sorrento Ventures, SoftBank Capital and Palisades Ventures.
Since the price for petrol is going up I will spend $ 15 on a “Pizza” at Pizza Hut or Domino’s instead of going out to the supermarket and buy it for $ 3 ? (plus $ 2 petrol, $ 1 for the owen.. total of $ 6)
makes sense..
Well, I suppose to most Americans it makes more sense to sit on their bums, get fatter, and spend more money.
No wonder everyone in this country is so fat.
…but with super-fit dialling fingers.
How does this company make money… advertising, premium chargers, etc…. or do they not make money yet?
Jeff
http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
No one is going to Applebees as result of a recession??? Head for the hills! Sounds like a full blown depression to me!
I love how everyone is so quick to attribute any change to recession. Every company with a bad earnings report will immediately identify the recession as being the primary cause of poor performance. It’s the ultimate scapegoat and too much of it exacerbates the situation.
BTW, mobile is effected by its own form of SEO. It is still nascent and proprietary enough in many instances that it more likely than not skews results equally or more than its Internet counterparts.
this is depressing.
technology paints the grim picture of a nation’s people, once wealthy and at the top of the world, being pushed down into poverty.
how are people supposed to afford better food than mcdonalds when we offshore all our jobs and have no natural resources to speak of, other than a couple bright kids here and there who change the world with an internet startup.
this is gonna get worse before it gets better.
I believe that the conclusion “people are eating more pizza” is definitely flawed in the context of the data presented. People typically call pizza places to order delivery, whereas they go to an already known Olive Garden or Taco Bell location. Therefore it is much more likely for someone to do a 411 search for the phone # of their local pizza hut than for the taco bell around the corner. Also, Macy’s dropping down on the list is not a good indicator of people not shopping there or any department store. Why would you do multiple 411 searches on an established location in your town/city that you already know is there? Why would you use this vs GOOG 411?
I think the stats are interesting. I’m not convinced that the data are truly meaningful (it’s not a huge sample size) and the carriers listed are not the most popular or widely used - in fact, they seem to be the more budget-conscious carriers, which could skew the data in terms of user demographics. It’s interesting to see though, and an interesting post.
Agreed with Michael - the increase in people requesting info for fast food and/or pizza places does not indicate anything other than the fact that people are trying to find them because they don’t remember the number or know where the nearest location is.
I’d also be curious if they correlated this with internet searches as well. Now that we have mobile internet and free 411 services, why would they concentrate purely on regular 411 services? I rarely ever use 411 and will use a free one when given a chance just because the cost for the paid services are a little over the top.
sounds logical to me — people aren’t always rational, so even though it probably costs LESS to go pick up a pizza at the supermarket & bake it at home, what people are looking for is comfort - not necessarily a low-price alternative. And nothing says comfort like a huge slice of cheezy pizza…ya gotta love that stuff!
That’s just me, I know — but I love pizza (and I promise I’m not too tubby either).
Just like during the Depression, analysts forecasted that people would reduce spending on superfluous entertainment like going to movies — but the reverse happened. Movie attendance skyrocketed, presumably because people are looking for an escape and don’t think that 2 bucks here or 4 bucks there is being totally irresponsible.
mmm…pizza
This data is also skewed by the ability to order pizza online which is making visiting a pizza site all the more likely. There is a small leap in taking data that says people are searching for websites and directly correlating that to popularity.
I also think domino’s pizza will have an artificial bump in searches based off my Dan Quayle-esque tendency to throw an ‘e’ on the end…
Callie - I’d be interested to see the report you discuss in further detail…
Apologies - Calley =)
More overweight Americans — how long will the Earth support all that weight?
How has the marketing affected this? According to this article, it’s only a matter of time and technology before mobile advertising campaigns try to take a hold of consumer attention.
I would venture that this is primarily a reflection not of the population as a whole going more “down market,” but rather those who were searching for declining items are getting the information another way - like the intertubes.
Different demographics have access to different tools and to make broad assumptions on the data collected from the users of just one tool is quite foolish. It’s nearly a direct reflection of the 1936 Literary Digest presidential poll predicting a landslide defeat for Roosevelt. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/
An interesting effect we’ve noticed at 1-800-FREE411 is that our Driving Directions feature has gotten pretty popular pretty quickly. Is that due to high gas prices and people choosing to get turn-by-turn directions rather than trying to hunt for a location? Maybe. If it gets them off the road faster, then it saves a bit of gas money. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence that the feature has grown at the same time gas prices have risen.
Paul