News

Study reveals social media has little effect on buying behavior

April 28, 2011

According to USAToday, a new study by Forrester Research and GSI Commerce reports that social media has almost no influence on online buying behavior.

The report analyzed data captured from online retailers between November 12 and December 20, 2010. The data indicates that less than 2 percent of online orders were the result of shoppers coming from a social network.

The report showed email and search advertising to be much more effective for increasing traffic that ultimately lead to purchasing.

"The best analogy is in the South, a lot of people go to church on Sunday," said Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for GSI Commerce. "If you go with the theory that you should market where the people are, then you should be running off to market during church services. Facebook has the same analogy. Buying things from retailers is maybe 10th on the list of things they want to do on Facebook."

Seventy-seven percent of transactions in hard goods categories (TVs, for example) and 82 percent in soft goods categories happened after consumers were engaged in some form of interactive marketing before their purchase. Forty percent of hard goods transactions and 60 percent of soft goods transactions happened as a result of email and search advertising.

"It's been a mystery to me why the media is excited about social media. From a retail and commerce perspective, it seems to have no effect," Dias said.