Biography: Julia Jacobs is a research assistant at the Chair for Information Systems and Interorganizational Systems (Prof. Dr. Stefan Klein), University of Muenster. She did her B.Sc. Business Informatics at the University of Mannheim and received her Master's degree in 'Information Systems: Business Information Technology' at the University of Manchester. The results of her Master thesis were presented at the Oxford Retail Futures Conferences. Her research interests are in Online Consumer Search Behaviour and more specifically how online search varies depending on the consumers´ backgrounds and impacts market structures, online marketing and advertising strategies.

Abstract: Online consumer behaviour has important implications for marketing and economic theory, in particular consumer search theory, competition in electronic markets and the design of e-commerce systems. Online panel data has significant potential to create a new stream of research that is based on the very large samples of online users, i.e. ‘big data’, that creates new possibilities for theory building and testing using international, cross-sector research samples. The results will also have significant managerial implications in areas such as the allocation of online marketing spending, understanding the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns, online competitor analysis and the importance of website design on online user behaviour and sales.