In previous articles here and here, we’ve discussed the benefits of ‘liking’ in social media and how 42% of our respondents in a social media survey (October 2011) reported making a purchase based on the ‘like’ of a friend. In this survey, we also asked these participants about the specific type of products they purchased based on the ‘like’ of a friend, and how much they spent on those products.
Overall, and illustrated below, the top four categories of purchased products based on the ‘like’ of a friend were 1) Books, movies, music, games, 2) Entertainment, restaurants and attractions, 3) Grocery, health and beauty, 4) Electronics and computers.
Digging deeper into this data gleaned some interesting findings. Not surprisingly, women gravitated towards purchasing grocery, health and beauty products while men were more likely to purchase electronics and computers.
In terms of respondents’ age, those 55 to 64 years of age tended to favor the purchase of books, movies, games as well as grocery, health and beauty. Additionally, respondents in the 18-44 age group were more likely to purchase electronics than by those over the age of 45.
The income range of respondents did not seem to make a difference in the types of products purchased based on the ‘like’ of a friend, ostensibly because each product category can have a great variety of products at different price points and was not a focus of this survey.
In addition, we wanted to know the most they had spent on a single product purchased based on the ‘like’ of a friend. Here we found the ranges between $25and $500 shared a similar percentage of purchases, which was around 20% in all top-4 categories, as depicted below.
After crossing the data, we also got a glimpse of how respondents were spending their money and the products they purchased based in each price range. Below are some of the major takeaways:
- 40% of purchases less than $25 were in the books, movies and games category which was the healthiest percentage of purchases across all products and price ranges.
- Additionally, in the $25-$100 price bracket, the top 3 categories were 1) books, movies and games, 2) entertainment, restaurants and attractions, and 3) grocery, health and beauty with each of these categories representing approximately 25% of the purchases .
- In the $500-$1000 range, 25% of products purchased were electronics and computer related.
Our data here certainly seems to suggest that our top four product categories (1) Books, movies, music, games, 2) entertainment, restaurants and attractions, 3) grocery, health and beauty, 4) electronics and computers) have benefitted from ‘liking’ in social media, but that is not to say that other categories of products would not benefit as well.
To find out if your products will benefit from social media, conducting research within your specific target market is necessary to point you in the right direction when implementing and setting goals for social media.
Look for our next article which will detail some final thoughts about our social media survey and how to increase the consumer “buy-in” of ‘liking’ in social media.
–Katie Mauck, Senior Usability Analyst
