“The online shopping habits of Americans have been evolving. This current wave of social media shopping shows the combined power of micro-targeting and social proof,” says Lija Hogan, Principal of Enterprise Research Strategy at UserTesting. “It’s easy and embraces the habits people have already developed with social media.
“Social media often plays on several levels; not only do you have the brand telling the story, but the reactions of customers in comments function as social proof — ratings and reviews in the form of a narrative.”
“While this could be risky, the confidence of brands who show the ability to be open and address questions or challenges in public may reinforce the positive feelings customers build.”
The study also found that, over everything else, Americans primarily use social media as a method of product discovery before making purchasing decisions.
Many use their feeds to either read product reviews (22%), research products (20%), or gain inspiration for how to use products (15%). And the reviews can be make or break: 53% would be less likely to purchase a product if they see negative reviews.
88% said they’d likely trust others, including their family members (32%), friends (28%) and significant others (14%), to show them products they’d like.
A third said they’d trust influencers to review products, but many said they’d lose trust if they learned influencers were being sponsored by the company whose product it is (28%), if the review is biased (26%) or if they don’t point out any drawbacks (26%).
Further, 58% said they would scroll past a sponsored post on social media.
37% tend to either love or like the ads they see, citing the ads as helpful ways to find new products they’ve never seen before (66%) or show them what’s currently trendy (35%).
Meanwhile, 18% aren’t fond of ads, saying they disrupt how they use social media (63%) and aren’t interested in seeing what’s going viral (44%).
“People have always valued the opinions of friends and family when shopping, but social media shopping adds another dimension by allowing shoppers to observe others reacting to reviews and sharing their experiences with products,” says Hogan.
“As the value of ratings and reviews increases, people will put more trust and weight behind other people’s direct experiences with products when making buying decisions.”