Are you more apt to buy an item you see pop up on Pinterest or Facebook?
Most of the Pinterest and Facebook users polled by marketing firm SteelHouse said that the sites play a key role in their online buying. But Pinterest users are twice as likely to buy items they see on the site than are Facebook users.
Drilling further the results of the 309 online shoppers polled, 59 percent of Pinterest users said they’ve already bought something they saw pinned on Pinterest. In comparison, 33 percent of Facebook folks said they’ve bought a product or service they saw on an ad, a news feed, or a friend’s wall.
Still, Facebook remains the top choice among consumers for generating ideas on what they’d like to buy. It’s also the No. 1 social network for product sharing.
More than half (55 percent) of shoppers prefer to share news about their online purchase via Facebook. That compares with 22 percent for Twitter, 14 percent for Pinterest, 5 percent for Instagram, and only 3 percent for LinkedIn.
Moving beyond just Pinterest and Facebook, 98 percent of those polled said that online customer reviews are a major influence on their decision to buy a product or service.
A full 72 percent always read reviews before buying an item, while 26 percent sometimes read such reviews. And 83 percent take into account both the written comments and the star ratings, with half saying the lowest star rating they’d accept is three out of five.
