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Tag Archives: product recommendations
The Economist: friend recommendations are the most trusted source of product information
The Economist has a special section this week on social networking. They include the chart below pointing out that friend recommendations are the most trusted source of product information. What's interesting here is just how far ahead friend recommendations are from the next closest source; eyeballing the "trust completely" bar, the factor appears to be almost 3X. So if trust is important in your sales and marketing, you really need to be thinking about how to harness the power of social networks.
eMarketer: People trust friends more than they do bloggers
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:
Trust = Influence
There are lots of reasons why advice from friends is so much more influential than advice from strangers. Trust is a big one. The Wall Street Journal today has a piece about the growing sway marketers have over product recommendations online. "Paid to Pitch: Product Reviews by Bloggers Draw Scrutiny." I was particularly struck by the marketer who requires bloggers he hires to use a seal that says "Sponsored Post. 100% Real Opinion." It's so murky. Even if the overwhelming majority of amateur reviewers have no commercial interest (or hope of one in the future), the fact that some do ... read more
Person-to-person product recommendations: most influential on buyers, prefered by recommenders
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 ... read more