December 19th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Nielsen recently reported the results of a study that found 81% of online holiday shoppers are using reviews. This is higher than Jupiter/Forrester had found over a year ago, where over 70% of online shoppers sought out reviews. We also know from Jupiter that over 60% of offline purchases (some studies suggest more) are affected by online research. So, it’s quite possible that two-thirds of total retail sales are affected by reviews. We served 1.2B impressions of UGC on Cybermonday, and now serving 2 billion impressions of UGC per month on average.
Of course, if you aren’t leveraging the power of customer contributiosn right now, this news comes a little too late for this holiday season. However, it’s never too late. The impact of user generated content is the gift that keeps on giving throughout the entire year! Get started just after the holidays.
November 20th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
About a year ago ago we conducted the first U.S. study on product reviewers to understand who they are and what motivates them to write reviews. In that study we found that 90% of customers write reviews to ‘help others’.
This year we conducted similar research with Keller Fay in the UK. We found – believe it or not – similar results! We conducted a post-review intercept survey across several Bazaarvoice retail clients and found that Brits are driven by altruism when they write product reviews. We surveyed almost 3,800 Brits who wrote reviews on online e-commerce sites, and 94% of them said it was important to write reviews to help other consumers make good purchase decisions.
And their altruism doesn’t end with consumers; 82% of those surveyed said they wrote reviews to help companies make better decisions about the products they offer.
Also, most UK reviews are positive – 86% of UK reviewers said they left positive feedback online, and 11% said their comments were equally split between positive and negative. This reflects what we continue to find in the ratings J-Curve, which we discovered in 2006.
> See the press release here
> Download the full study results here
September 12th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Internet Retailer and Vovici recently released a study to find out the top emerging technology priorities for online retailers. As retailers are feeling the heat (or lack thereof!) of a slow economy, Ratings and Reviews rose to the top of their priority list. Emarketer reports:
Letting customers rate products on e-commerce sites is the top Web 2.0 spending priority, according to online retailers in the US surveyed in August 2008 by Vovici for Internet Retailer. Well over one-half (57%) of online pure plays said customer ratings and reviews were a priority for them.
Internet Retailer said online merchants wanted these features because they drove sales. It also noted that PetsUnited, which operates 10 e-commerce sites, reported a 50% jump in average sales when shoppers ordered right after viewing a video, compared with after viewing just text and pictures.
“Shoppers that view videos and read customer ratings and reviews spend more,” said Corbin de Rubertis, president of retail widget developer Qponix, in the Internet Retailer article. “Even in a weaker economy, retailers are going to spend money on better technology if it drives traffic and converts sales.”
Emarketer also recites a study we launched with Vizu highlighting the importance of reviews to retailers:
Last year I wrote this article highlighting why ratings and reviews are the highest NPV marketing investment, and why they should get launched before the holidays. Coincidentally I wrote it one year ago yesterday, and it’s still as relevant. You’ve got a few months left. Now is the time to move!
July 9th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Opinion Research Corporation released the results from a new study that (again) supports the fact consumer reviews play a major role in the decision to purchase products and services.
In their own words, “A whopping eighty-three percent of respondents polled indicated that online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on purchasing decisions.”
They also found…
- 70% of respondents seek out information for a particular brand of goods and services.
- 32% reported posting their own online feedback on product or service experiences.
See more of the study here.
Now I say this study “again” supports the demand for reviews because we have been tracking and fielding studies for three years on this topic. See our comprehensive overview of over 100 statistics and case study results here.
April 10th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Ad Age reported resutls from a study by ZenithOptimedia…
- Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to new data from Publicis media network ZenithOptimedia. The data comes from ZenithOptimedia's Touchpoints ROI Tracker, a comprehensive project comprising over 300,000 interviews across 34 countries and covering more than 4,000 brands in 126 product and service categories.
- Consumer touchpoints were each given a "contact clout factor," a number on a scale of 1 to 100 that indicates the relative influence of the touchpoint on purchasing.
- Recommendations from family and friends led the pack with an average score of 84. TV ads and Internet search were next, with an average score of 69 and 67, followed by magazine ads at 60, newspaper ads at 55, outdoor ads at 45, radio ads at 42, and Internet banner ads at 41.
Here's an interesting quote:
- Though word-of-mouth may be one of the greatest influences on brand choice, marketers still face a great challenge is making it scalable, said Bruce Goerlich, ZenithOptimedia's president of strategic resources, North America. "Word of mouth is incredibly powerful, but we as an industry are not doing as good a job as we could do in generating it," he said.
Maybe he hasn't heard of Bazaarvoice 
October 11th, 2007 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Yesterday, eMarketer reported on a Nielsen study that found that consumer recommendations are the most trusted form of advertising, not just among US consumers but worldwide. Over three-quarters of those surveyed – in 47 markets across the globe – rated recommendations from consumers as a trusted form of advertising vs. just 63% for newspapers, 56% for TV and magazines, and 34% and 26% for search engine ads and banner ads, respectively. The chart below shows how consumer opinions and recommendations stack up against several other forms of advertising, and the difference isn't slight.
What's even more interesting to me is that "traditional" forms of advertising, like TV and radio, scored significantly higher than the predominant forms of online advertising – search and banner ads – in spite of the sophisticated targeting capabilities of search and display. After all, isn't the goal of online ad targeting – behavioral, contextual, etc. – to provide a level of relevance and utility that excuses the intrusion of advertising? Trust would seem to follow, but not so. Consumers know the difference and they put their faith in each other first and foremost.
These findings may explain the stellar case study results we've seen from several of our clients – higher conversion rates and significantly lower return rates on products that have customer reviews. We are seeing similar results from our Ask & Answer solution, not to mention significant reduction in call center volume and costs! In addition to selling each other, customers are also highly effective at servicing and supporting each other with product expertise and answers to tough "buy or bail" questions that arise when shopping online. Can other forms of advertising do that?
October 2nd, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
As a Board Member for Word of Mouth Marketing Association I'm obviously going to spread word of mouth on our conference. But for good reason.
Every day that customers trust advertising less is a day word of mouth becomes more critical to business growth. Yet there is ambiguity on who should own WOM marketing, what strategies are effective, how it should be measured, who should be targeted, and how to execute the right offline and online tactics.
I personally don't believe companies can be competitive or market leaders without having a comprehensive and operational focus on how their product and service drives word of mouth, along with a clear understanding of how to amplify the customer voice with word of mouth marketing strategies.
If you agree, you'll join me at this years WOMMA Summit, November 14 and 15 in Las Vegas. And, I'll sweeten the deal!…
When you register online, enter the code 'guestofbazaarvoice' for $75 off. And when I see you there, I'll buy (drinks that is…not your bets!).
October 2nd, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Deloitte’s consumer group completed a study last month and found almost two-thirds (62%) of the respondents to an online poll said they now read online product reviews written by other consumers. More than eight in 10 (82%) of those who read reviews said that their purchasing decisions have been directly influenced by those reviews. People have used the reviews both to confirm initial buying decisions and to change them, the study found.
Let's do the math: .62 X .82 = 50% of all consumers will make a purchase based on reviews!
That means, for a retailer or manufacturer not to have re reviews on their product means that they are turning away 50% of the prospects looking at their products!
This matches the study by eVoc insights done a couple years ago that found 50% of consumers needed reviews when purchasing consumer electronics before purchasing.
In addition, 69% of the respondents said they have shared online reviews with friends, family or colleagues, the report said. So, there’s a viral, word of mouth effect on the word of mouth itself!
See other stats and studies related to reviews and social commerce here.
August 11th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
We recently published a joint study with Vizu Research on reviews.
The key finding is that US and UK shoppers have more trust and respect for Brands that enable product reviews. In fact, 8 out of 10 shoppers trust and respect brands more if they have authentic, user generated reviews on their site. So, not only do reviews help improve conversion, average order value, returns, satisfaction, natural search traffic, RSS feed click through, email revenue, and offline impact (ask us for any of these case studies)…they also improve brand perception!
Another finding: US shoppers consider ratings and reviews to be the most useful eCommerce site feature (44 percent). Product comparison (15 percent), product navigation (12 percent), and privacy information (11 percent) followed in the distance. We knew this already from site surveys with PETCO and CompUSA, but it's always helpful to get another data point! We're sort of maniacal about data
