Homepage-Nutzung im Handwerk – Eine sektorale und regionale Analyse

Abstract

To analyze the degree of digitization in the domain of customer acquisition and customer loyalty, we run a web scraping analysis using the yellow pages and craft webpages. We thus analyze sectoral and regional information as well as information on the webpages' update status and connection to social media channels. We further add regional and socio-demographicvariables to the firm dataset. Overall, there are roughly 345.000 firms and 105.000 webpages in our dataset, which gives us a fairly representative dataset to determine the basic structures of online-marketing in the German craft sector. We find strong sectoral differences regarding the availability of web pages. Roughly 44% of craft firms in the health domain have a web page, which is the highest share of all sectors; firms in the food and crafts for private demand have the lowest share with about 20%. Of those web pages, the domains most up-to-date are health, food and auto repair trades. Connecting social media accounts to web pages is fairly common with Facebook being used the most, while Twitter and Instagram are used only in specific trades. The resulting overall figures of about 30% of all firms having a web page and about 10% using social media resonate well with previous studies conducted in this field. On a regional level, we find that urban firms are almost twice as likely to have web pages than rural firms; a regression analysis confirms that population densityis strongly linked to the degree of digitization in online marketing of craft firms. Using addition socio-demographic variables, we find that the highest likelihood for web pages are associated with regions with higher population density, a comparably young population, higher influx of new inhabitants, on average higher educational levels and higher craft revenue. Further, broad band access has a significant positive correlation with the likelihood for web pages in rural regions and a negative correlation in suburban regions. Thus, there are many rural regions with high-speed internet and a strong digital marketing; however, causal effects cannot be derived using our dataset. The patterns of digitization found in our data can be interpreted as a rational reaction to sectoral and customer specific market demands, relative prices and the respective reaction by craft firms. However, the regional and sector differences can also be seen as a lack of digitization in specific sectors and regions that might become an issue for craft firms in the competition for customers and skilled employees.