Here’s an article in AdWeek summarizing the findings from a recent Nielsen study of consumer trust. “Recommendations from people known” is by far the most trusted source of input — 20% ahead of the next closest. Nielsen gathered opinions from 25,000 internet consumers to produce this chart:
Word-of-mouth has a radically greater impact on purchase behavior when it comes from friends than from strangers (like bloggers), according to a Mintel survey of buying behavior, just cited in eMarketer,
eMarketer says: “While bloggers may bring buzz to a product, converting the buzz to sales is another matter.”
“It’s interesting to find that as much time as we spend online, we still prefer a personal recommendation from someone we know and trust,” said Chris Haack of Mintel.
Here’s their data:
Tom Hespos was focussing on ad targetting in this blog post, but he’s accidentally made a powerful case for trusted references.
“As much as we might not like to admit it, what we perceive our needs to be is heavily influenced by our friends’ needs. You might be perfectly happy, thinking all your needs are met, but if your five best friends suddenly purchase new cars, new Kindles, or a new style of clothing, it’s likely that you’ll consider buying these new things yourself. To paraphrase George Carlin, rest his soul, coveting other people’s stuff is what keeps the economy going.
“The influence our friends have over our purchasing habits isn’t automatic. Of course, we have to know about our friends’ purchasing habits. Once we know Fred bought a new Honda Accord, we have to go through a consideration process of our own. Getting to that consideration in the mind of the consumer is the classic challenge for most marketers.”
A couple recent studies by BIGresearch that look at purchase influence factors across all media - traditional and online - shed further light on the importance of the personal advice network. As a pair, they paint an interesting picture: person-to-person product recommendations are the #1 influence factor on buyers (at least for a number of product categories), and they are the preferred way for recommenders to deliver their advice.
One study, conducted for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, shows that word-of-mouth is the top influence channel for electronics (44.4%) and apparel purchases (34.3%). In electronics, product reviews came in second (36.8%) and retail advertising inserts came in third (29.2%). In apparel, retail advertising inserts came in second (33.3%) and in-store promotions came in third (30.4%).
The other, reprinted in eMarketer, shows that across all age groups, the primary means through which people communicate product recommendations are the traditional ones - face-to-face, email, and phone - with blogs and communities far behind. What’s significant here is that the leaders are primarily point-to-point channels, not mass communications channels, highlighting that people with advice to offer prefer to deliver it directly to the person who needs it. (OK, people could be email blasting their product recommendations to their friends, but I suspect the dominant mode here is more targeted.)
