Word of mouth drives 13% of consumer sales
Hollywood, Calif. - Online and offline consumer conversations and recommendations account for 13% of consumer sales, on average, which represents $6 trillion in annual consumer spending. In higher price-point categories, word of mouth's impact is almost 20% of sales, according to a new study from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).
About one-third of the sales impact is attributable to word of mouth acting as an "amplifier" to paid media, such as television, with consumers spreading advertised messages. But most of the impact of word of mouth works independently of advertising, whether stimulated by product or customer service experiences, public relations, owned and earned digital content, referral marketing, and so on.
Other key findings include:
• Offline and online word of mouth are both strong purchase drivers, with offline accounting for two-thirds of sales and online accounting for one-third.
• Researchers found that an offline word-of-mouth impression drives at least five times more sales than a paid advertising impression, and much more (as much as 100 times more) for higher-consideration categories. A similar finding for online word of mouth requires more comprehensive data on impressions and/or mentions, which are not yet publicly available.
• Word of mouth's impact happens closer to the time of purchase than traditional media — often within two weeks.
Marketing, Finance - Study – Most holiday purchases made after Thanksgiving
By Dan Berthiaume
New York - The majority of purchases are made after Thanksgiving with an 81% average increase in sales leading up to Dec. 19. Additionally, a study from marketing technology provider Criteo shows the average shopping cart size is the largest on Thanksgiving Day ($147), followed by Christmas Day ($126).
The data released by Criteo represents the activity of millions of online transactions from close to 500 US retailers over desktop, smartphones and tablets in 2013 and 2014. Additional key takeaways include:
• In the 20 days that retailers have to perform this holiday season, retailers will see a 30% increase in conversion rate and 5 percent increase in average cart size
• Mobile devices will play a major role in consumer purchase behavior this year with a projected 27% of purchases coming from mobile devices and 48% of those coming from tablets
• The highest-performing time for purchases via tablet is 3 - 5 p.m., whereas the highest-performing time for purchases via smartphone is 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and purchases via desktop is 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
• Fashion and luxury verticals have the largest share of mobile purchases during the holiday shopping season followed by toys and gadgets and sporting goods.