How Engineers Research Products Online: What the Studies Show

An engineer has a design problem: a sensor that drifts, a new interface to support, a component that’s going end of life. How engineers research products in that moment matters more to a technical company than almost any campaign, because most of that research happens before anyone contacts a vendor. It’s also better studied than many marketers realize. Library and information science has examined engineers’ information seeking for decades, and recent industry surveys update the picture for online buying. This article summarizes what the studies show and what it means for the content you publish.

Key Takeaways

• Engineers do much of their evaluation alone: TREW Marketing’s 2025 survey found buyers completed about 60% of the buying process before speaking with a vendor.
• They value specifications and depth: datasheets (79%) and technical articles (61%) were the content most often named as valuable for a significant purchase in the same survey.
• Information seeking is driven by work tasks. Leckie, Pettigrew and Sylvain’s 1996 model of professionals’ information seeking places work roles and tasks at the start of the process.
• Engineers search for documents and people together: Hertzum and Pejtersen (2000) found engineers used documents to find people and people to find documents.
• Engineers choose sources by accessibility in a broad sense: Fidel and Green (2004) found the concept covered several meanings, from being easy to get to and familiar, to being in the right format and saving time.

The problem: content written for a funnel, not a task

A lot of technical marketing is organized around a funnel: awareness, consideration, decision. Engineers don’t experience it that way. They arrive with a task, such as choosing between two ADCs or checking whether a module supports a protocol, and they want the answer to that task as fast as possible. Content that’s organized around the vendor’s story rather than the engineer’s task makes them work for the answer, and the research suggests they’ll go to a more accessible source instead.

What the research says

Work tasks drive information seeking

Leckie, Pettigrew and Sylvain’s “Modeling the Information Seeking of Professionals: A General Model Derived from Research on Engineers, Health Care Professionals, and Lawyers” (The Library Quarterly, 1996) built a general model from studies of several professions. In it, information needs arise from work roles and their associated tasks, and the characteristics of those needs, together with the professional’s awareness of sources, shape where they look. For product content, the implication is that the engineer’s task, not the product category, defines what they search for.

Documents and people are searched together

Hertzum and Pejtersen’s “The information-seeking practices of engineers: searching for documents as well as for people” (Information Processing & Management, 2000) studied engineers in two engineering companies. They found that engineers’ searches for documents and for people were interwoven: documents led to people who knew more, and people pointed to documents. For a product company, this suggests that named authors, reachable applications engineers and community forums are part of the information a buyer is looking for, not separate from it.

Accessibility has many meanings

Fidel and Green’s “The many faces of accessibility: engineers’ perception of information sources” (Information Processing & Management, 2004) asked engineers why they chose particular sources. Accessibility was a prominent criterion, but it meant several things: physically or digitally easy to get to, familiar, in the right format, containing a lot of the needed information in one place, and saving time. A datasheet that’s complete but hard to find, or a page that’s easy to find but missing the key table, both fail on accessibility.

Engineers lean on internal and familiar sources

Kwasitsu’s “Information-seeking behavior of design, process, and manufacturing engineers” (Library & Information Science Research, 2003) surveyed design, process and manufacturing engineers and found heavy reliance on internal sources, such as colleagues and their own documents, with differences in source use between the three engineering groups. A vendor’s content competes with these familiar sources, so it has to be at least as quick and dependable.

Recent data: evaluation happens before contact

TREW Marketing’s 2025 State of Marketing to Engineers report, with GlobalSpec, found buyers completed about 60% of the buying process before speaking with a vendor, and that datasheets (79%), technical articles (61%), CAD drawings (37%) and product demo videos (35%) were the content most often named as valuable for a significant purchase. The older research explains why: engineers prefer sources they control and can consult quickly.

What engineers look for, and what to publish

What engineers look for	What the research suggests	What to publish
An answer to a specific task	Tasks drive information seeking (Leckie et al., 1996)	Pages and articles organized around tasks and problems, not just products
Complete specifications	Datasheets valued most (TREW, 2025)	Complete datasheets with conditions, in HTML as well as PDF
Depth and reasoning	Technical articles valued highly (TREW, 2025)	Application notes and technical articles with measurements
A person who knows	Documents and people searched together (Hertzum and Pejtersen, 2000)	Named authors, reachable applications engineers, forums
Speed and the right format	Accessibility in many senses (Fidel and Green, 2004)	Findable pages, downloadable models and files, clear navigation
Dependable familiar sources	Reliance on internal and familiar sources (Kwasitsu, 2003)	Consistent, stable documentation that becomes a trusted reference

What to actually do

Organize content around tasks

Map the tasks that lead engineers to your product, such as selecting, integrating, debugging and qualifying, and make sure each has a page or article that answers it directly.

Make the datasheet complete and findable

Publish full specifications with conditions, ideally as HTML pages that search engines can index, alongside the PDF. Don’t gate datasheets behind forms.

Put people next to documents

Name authors and reviewers, link to applications engineering contacts, and make forum or support channels easy to find from technical pages.

Provide the files engineers work with

CAD models, footprints, reference designs and code examples count as content. They save time, which is part of what accessibility means to engineers.

Keep it consistent so it becomes familiar

Engineers return to sources they trust. Stable URLs, consistent structure and dated revisions help your documentation become one of those sources.

How to put it to work

If you have an hour

List the five tasks that most often bring engineers to your product and search for each one as an engineer would. Note where your content appears, and how many clicks it takes to reach the answer.

If you have a sprint

Fix the biggest accessibility gap you found: an ungated HTML datasheet, a task-focused application note, or clear contact paths from technical pages.

If you want it to last the product’s lifetime

Add task coverage to your content plan, review it with applications engineers each quarter, and track the questions that still reach sales and support as a measure of what’s missing.

The question to ask yourself: “If an engineer had this task at 11 p.m., could they finish it with what we’ve published?”

Frequently asked questions

How do engineers research products?

Mostly on their own, starting from a specific work task, using a mix of search engines, supplier sites, datasheets, colleagues and forums. They choose sources that give a usable answer quickly.

What content do engineers value most when buying?

In TREW Marketing’s 2025 survey, datasheets (79%) and technical articles (61%) were most often named as valuable for a significant purchase, followed by CAD drawings and product demo videos.

Do engineers prefer documents or people?

Both, interwoven. Research found engineers use documents to find people who know more and people to find the right documents.

Why do engineers ignore some vendor content?

Often because it’s not accessible in their sense: hard to find, incomplete, in the wrong format or slower than a familiar alternative.

Should datasheets be gated behind a form?

Generally no. Engineers do much of their evaluation alone and value speed; a gate adds friction to the most valued piece of content.

Related reading: writing technical articles engineers trust, technical product launch content plan and how to read a sensor datasheet.

Sources

1. Leckie, G. J., Pettigrew, K. E., & Sylvain, C. (1996). Modeling the information seeking of professionals: A general model derived from research on engineers, health care professionals, and lawyers. The Library Quarterly, 66(2), 161–193. https://doi.org/10.1086/602864
2. Hertzum, M., & Pejtersen, A. M. (2000). The information-seeking practices of engineers: Searching for documents as well as for people. Information Processing & Management, 36(5), 761–778. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0306-4573(00)00011-X
3. Fidel, R., & Green, M. (2004). The many faces of accessibility: Engineers’ perception of information sources. Information Processing & Management, 40(3), 563–581. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0306-4573(03)00003-7
4. Kwasitsu, L. (2003). Information-seeking behavior of design, process, and manufacturing engineers. Library & Information Science Research, 25(4), 459–476. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0740-8188(03)00054-9
5. TREW Marketing with GlobalSpec (2025). 2025 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report. https://www.trewmarketing.com/hubfs/Technical%20Resources/Research/2025%20SMTE%20Research/PDF/2025%20State%20of%20Marketing%20to%20Engineers%20Research.pdf