Social Networking Sites Have Little Influence on Women’s Purchase Decisions
Are women swayed to make purchase decisions based on their social networking experiences? The answer seems to vary depending on who you ask.
Q Interactive presented its “Women’s Survey” at ad:tech Chicago earlier this month, which showed that only 3.3 percent of female Internet users in the U.S. said they were “greatly” influenced by social networking sites in their purchase decisions.
Another 21.9 percent said they were “somewhat” influenced, while 37.7 percent said they were “not really” influenced and 37.1 percent said they were not influenced “at all.”
Approximately 15 percent of respondents said they did not use social networking sites at all.
The story changes dramatically when it comes to coupons and discounts, which 41.6 percent of respondents said influenced their online purchase decisions. Product rating and review sites/online information searches influenced the online purchase decisions of 22.2 percent of the female respondents, while online ads were cited by 9.5 percent of them as decision influencers.
Just 4.0 percent said advice from blog posts, online communities and Web sites influenced their online purchase decisions.
So, what do females use social networking sites for?
For 34.6 percent of respondents to Q Interactive’s survey, sending private messages to friends was their primary social networking site activity, followed by sharing photos (13.4 percent), chatting/sending instant messages (12.8 percent), posting public messages to communities (11.4 percent) and getting product information, including coupons and savings (8.7 percent).
Only 1.0 percent said they write reviews about products they’ve seen on social networking sites, while 8.7 percent said they get product information, including coupons and savings on these sites.
These findings don’t seem to jive well with previous findings from other surveys, which have found that a significant number of females use social networks to share opinions and search for recommendations.
The reason for this could be that Q Interactive required its respondents to choose only one answer for each question. “While researching and sharing product information might not be women’s first priority on social networks, that does not mean they are not doing it,” eMarketer notes in its analysis of the data.
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