Do you do much shopping, whether it’s online or offline? No matter how you end up purchasing your products or services, how do you know what you’re buying is any good?
Back before looking on the internet was the norm, people would recommend products by word of mouth. This recommendation would come because of the personal experience that that person would have with the product. But now, since we do have the internet, and we have the ability to write our own reviews on products, which in turn, will let others know what we thought of them. Somebody else’s review on a product or service can literally be just as good as a recommendation from a person who’s standing right next to you.
The folks over at BrightLocal have released their fourth annual Local Consumer Review Survey, and it reveals some interesting facts about the growing importance of online reviews when it comes to making a purchasing decision.
Around May and June, BrightLocal will conduct their study on consumer usage and their attitudes towards online reviews. During this time, they give local consumers a questionnaire to fill out, and over two thousand people gave their responses. In case you were wondering, the respondents came from the USA and Canada.
Out of the 13 questions found on the survey, enough information was discovered that allowed BrightLoal to determine that 70 to 90 percent of people looking for a product to purchase have read reviews to determine the quality of a local business, that consumers will trust a local business more that has positive reviews, and that a consumer can trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
Myles Anderson, who works at BrightLocal, has written such a post on Search Engine Land, and gives us some specifics not found in this post (after all, why would you bother reading the post if I gave up ALL the details in this one, right?), and you’ll find some more information and some charts to illustrate what consumers feel about online reviews.
To check out the post, you can go to Search Engine Land, or just follow the link below to the post!
Search Engine Land: 88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations
88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations