A new report out from Collective Bias addresses the role that reviews have on the shopping experience and it emphasizes the importance of social media posts and blog reviews in the digital realm today.
Of those surveyed by the company, one in five U.S. consumers (20.1 percent) have purchased a product in-store directly as a result of reading a blog review or social media post about it online. Younger consumers are apparently slightly more open to influence in this regard, with one in four young adults in the U.S. ages 25 to 34 (25.9 percent) having purchased a product in-store as a result of an online blog review or social media post. For those 65+, however, the percentage drops to just 16.6 percent.
One of the most surprising statistics (at least to me) was that men are more likely than women to allow blog reviews to influence their purchases at a rate of almost 2 to 1. According to the Collective Bias study, one in five men (18.3 percent) have had blog reviews influence in-store purchases. This compares to one in ten women (9.2 percent) who've done the same.
There's quite a bit of other useful data in the report, addressing which specific social networks (Facebook and YouTube for example) are most useful in driving action among specific age groups, the types of products purchased as a result of reading reviews and social posts, as well as the specific forms of communication that are most likely to convince consumers to purchase an item in-store.
