Researching before purchase increases with age

A survey of 1600 UK consumers found that about two thirds of Britons regularly check the Internet for material about an online retailer before committing to a purchase. It appears that consumer-created content, such as online reviews or blog posts, are read by 46 % Britons prior to buying recommendations on a specific product before buying it.

Another finding was the importance of ‘online reputation’. The report did not define exactly what this was and how it is evaluated although customer review material was seen as being one of the most important components. Well, the importance of whatever this reputation thing is increases with the age of the consumer with 70% of over-55 year olds regularly researching, compared to only 53% of 16-24 year olds.

I am not really sure what this tells us. Maybe older people are not so gullible as younger people? Maybe older people have more time to do all of this checking?

Whatever the reason, it seems that seeding the web with reviews of your products, is a good thing if you are aiming at the oldies. Dick Stroud