September 26, 2005

Blogs influence shopper decisions

by brian_turner

According to a survey sponsored by Hostway, shoppers are starting to use blogs as guides to what they should and shouldn’t buy. Seventy-seven percent of those surveyed said they consulted blogs before going shopping.

The blogs were considered to provide trustworthy information, because they are written by real people and based on actual experiences, and were therefore not subject to the same marketing pressures as commercial websites. The survey suggests that blogs could rival other media as a source of consumer information about products and services.

Paul Halfpenny, product manager at Hostway said that the information on blogs about consumer goods could reach a huge audience.

Those most likely to let opinions on blogs influence what they bought were in the 25-34 age group. Eighty-three percent of this group were influenced by blogs about their purchases.

The research also found that 49% of those surveyed thought blogs were as credible as articles in magazines, 46% thought web journals were as trustworthy as newspapers and 40% thought web logs and TV news programmes were as reliable as each other.

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Story link: Blogs influence shopper decisions

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