Does Social Media Influence Holiday Shoppers?
December 11th, 2009Posted by: J.W. Crump Posted in Social Media Apps, Studies, Twitter, Web 2.0
comScore says ‘yes’! In a recent press release, the company released information and data about holiday e-spending in an attempt to show that social media and online purchasing is on the rise. Earth-shattering news? No. But interesting nonetheless.
Below is a chart of the various social media channels that respondents to their survey claimed they had used when gift researching this year.
I find it interesting that user reviews influenced purchases more than expert reviews. Consumers obviously value recommendations from others, but the expertise level of the source doesn’t matter quite as much. Also, don’t the numbers for Twitter seem kinda…low? I would have expected the amount of those following a company and those influenced by a friend’s tweet to be at least a combined 10%.
The release also contains a graph showing the amount of online purchases by week leading up to New Year’s Day. The recession doesn’t seem to be affecting online holiday shopping for 2009, although this may be due to consumers hoping that the Internet will provide them with better deals than stores. The week beginning with Cyber Monday (November 30th) sees a huge jump in online spending, although as this Focus article explains, Cyber Monday is never the biggest online shopping day of the year. It typically begins about a week or two later, though still on a Monday.
