Mobile Social Media Usage Affects Shopping Habits

JULY 2011

Consumers trust friends’ opinions and access them on the go while shopping

As more consumers access social media via mobile devices, it changes the way they research and shop for products and services offline.

Knowledge Networks and MediaPost Communications surveyed teen and adult social media users for “The Faces of Social Media” study and found that, in May 2011, 40% of respondents accessed social media via their mobile phones. This was an increase from 28% who reported doing the same in September 2010.

Additionally, 37% of US social media users trust what their friends and family members say about a brand or product on social media, compared to only 10% who trust what strangers say. Drilling down to specific social elements, 26% trust what friends and family members say in blog posts, 25% trust their posts on social media sites and 20% trust their tweets. This is compared to 7% who trust the blogs and posts of strangers, and 5% who trust strangers’ tweets.

Additionally, an April 2011 study from ROI Research found that 60% of US social network users were at least somewhat likely to take action when a friend posted something about a product, service, company or brand on a social media site.

As more consumers access social media on the go, their in-store shopping decisions will be affected by these same influential brand discussions. The Knowledge Networks study found that 27% of US mobile internet users turned to social media to compare or check prices before, during or after shopping, while 24% checked reviews and 16% got coupons or discounts for local businesses. Overall, half of mobile web users interacted with social media at some point in the shopping process.

This makes social media, where consumers connect with their friends and family, an important destination for researching purchasing decisions in-store. This is an added challenge for retailers and marketers, as they must focus on keeping customers happy on the go and remember how much influence a customer’s social media posts can have on their friends and family members.

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Mobile vs. Social: The Status of Marketing Integration

MARCH 30, 2011

Email has best integration with mobile and social tactics

Integration has been a buzzword for social media marketers for a while now. As efforts—and budgets—in social media evolve from experimentation toward more serious campaigns, questions of how well social is fitting into the marketing mix abound, and true integration can seem distant.

According to research from marketing software solutions company Unica, marketing integration is very much a work in progress, and for more than just social media. Adopting cross-channel campaigns is a challenge, and many barriers remain to integrating online and offline data. And for social media and mobile, tactical integration with the rest of the marketing department is often a ways off.

The Q4 2010 survey of marketers in Europe and North America found that social sharing links in emails and web offers were the best-integrated social media marketing tactic, with 62% of respondents saying the sharing links were run as part of integrated campaigns. A majority of respondents were also integrating applications and widgets, social media advertising and location-based games into the rest of their efforts.

For mobile marketing tactics, the picture was similar. Again, email was best-integrated: 64% of respondents said mobile versions of email messages were part of integrated marketing campaigns. Mobile messaging, location-based targeting and mobile websites were also integrated by a majority of marketers.