What Channels Influence the Social Consumer?

FROM: http://www.brandingpersonality.com/what-channels-influence-the-social-consumer/

by Robert Gembarski on December 27, 2011

I recently came across this interesting InfoGraph that discusses which online channels influence the Social Consumer. The InfoGraph is made up from the results of a survey administered to 1,500 participants about the products and services they have most recently searched online for and how they went about their search. What did they find? Well for starters, they found a correlation between certain products and services that you’re looking for and specific channels where the most influence on a purchase decision took place. Lets take a deeper look in this.

 

Top 5 Influential Online Channels

The Top 5 Influential Channels were:

Search Results- Not surprised by this one

Brand Websites- Makes a lot of sense for this one to be number 2

News Articles- People seem to want to brush up on their news about a particular product, service, or brand

Product Review Sites- Surprised this one didn’t come before the news, but none the less makes a lot of sense.

Online Ads- The one surprise on this list. Seems as though online ads truly do have some influence on how people spend their money, if done correctly!

 

Products and Services Researched

While conducting this survey on online influence,  12 products and services were questioned. Here are the 12 that participants were asked to respond on.

Automotives

Baby Products

Beauty

Cookware

Electronics

Fashion

Kitchen Appliances

Music

Personal Finance

Restaurants

Tools/DIY Products

Travel

 

Channel Influence

I’m not going to sit here and  go over each and every one, since you can easily take a look at the InfoGraph yourself and see which channels influence which products the most. I do however want to point out that Social Media claimed 5 of the bottom 6 channels. This just goes to show you how influential social media has become in today’s age, and how much more influential it will be in the near future. In todays world, anyone can go online to one of these sites and see which products and services their friends are fans of and follow. Once there, you can see anything that your friends might have written about those products, which in turn can sway your purchasing decision a bit.

For the most part, word of mouth used to be the only way in which people found out about products or services. They’d hear horror or success stories from their friends about particular products and services and act accordingly based solely on what they heard. Not much has changed about this, besides taking it from in person and placing it online for all to see. Since Social Media sites enable pretty much anyone to see your content, it wise for brands to start monitoring and responding to all negative comments in order to make sure that their online reputation remains in tact.

One last thing I want to point out to you from this InfoGraph, and this pertains mostly to those in the restaurant industry, but look at the number of people that go to their Facebook and Foursquare profiles to research Restaurants…. Hint, Hint It’s time to get on there and if you already are its time to be more informative and engaging with your followers because whether you like it or not, people are online looking at and talking about your restaurant! If you are interested in learning more about how social media can increase your restaurants bottom line, check out Social Media+ Restaurants = More Foot Traffic. To find out more about how Branding Personality can make your restaurant flourish with social media check out our Ebook on Social Media for Restaurants!