Blogs drive beauty purchases
According to a research jointly led by PR agency DeVries and online participatory information network BlogHer on the influence of media on women’s shopping behaviors when it comes to beauty and personal care products, blogs are two times more likely (63%) than magazines (26%) to have inspired a beauty product purchase over the last six months.
The survey was conducted through the BlogHer online network on October 2010 on a sample of 1,074 women across the United States, who had to answer 25 questions aiming at measuring the relative influence traditional media and blogs have on the products women purchase and brand preference. Women in the sample were significantly younger than the average U.S. population: a majority (48%) were 18-34, 31% were 35-44 and 13% were 45-54. However, it “mirrors the general online population when it comes to attitudes about beauty products,” say the authors.
"We’ve long believed at DeVries that trusted blogs have as much influence on purchase decisions as traditional media outlets, both inside the beauty category and out. We just didn’t have data to confirm what we felt intuitively to be true,” said Stephanie Smirnov, President ofDeVries Public Relations. “Our research partnership with BlogHer was forged to validate our hypothesis about blogger influence on beauty purchase decisions, and it’s been extremely illuminating."
Actually, women appear just as likely to trust the beauty product advice from a parenting (43%), health (42%) or lifestyle (37%) blog, as from a beauty and fashion blog (43%). Furthermore, when seeking recommendations about beauty product, women turn to and trust “familiar” bloggers more than store websites, social networks or message boards.
Women still buy offline
However, while women tend to research online they continue to buy offline. According to the survey, U.S. women prefer buying beauty products offline.
“The brick and mortar store (offline) beats online shopping for beauty products by a margin of four to one. And this ratio extends across all beauty verticals; cosmetics, skin care or hair care. Women want a 3-D experience when it comes to beauty products; they have to see it, feel it and touch it,” comment the authors.
Cost and efficiency were cited as the top reasons for preferring online shopping, although most women (39%) still said they would prefer to purchase their cosmetics in a real store.
“Doing a deeper dive into the beauty product segment, specifically, revealed that even when purchasing ultimately takes place offline, online word-of-mouth maintains its powerful influence,” added Elisa Camahort Page, co-founder of BlogHer, Inc.
The full results of the survey can be found at: www.blogher.com/beauty-eye-blog-holder-0
