The F Factor

Source: PPAI....Why is the F-FACTOR important to consumers? It offers the promise of a buying power that is more efficient, more relevant, and more interesting than before, where consumers either had to spend endless time and effort on trying to discover the best of the best, or had to rely on sources that were distant, unknown or distrusted, and therefore potentially unreliable or irrelevant.
Just a few recent stats demonstrating the reach and power of the F-FACTOR:

• The F-FACTOR is currently dominated by Facebook, as more than 500 million active users spend more than 700 billion minutes a month on the site. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
• And its impact isn’t just on Facebook itself. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook across more than 2.5 million external websites. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
• The average user clicks the ‘Like’ button nine times each month. (Facebook, 2010)

Here are just three of the ways that the F-FACTOR influences consumer behavior

1. F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks. People are curious and interested in what their friends and contacts think, do, eat, read, listen to, drive, travel to and buy, because often this will be similar to how they want to think, act and buy. No surprise then that consumers are embracing communities, tools and apps that allow them to dive into and discover selections from friends, fans and followers.
   
2. F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks. While consumers sometimes enjoy finding the best of the best throughdiscovery, they are increasingly able to access personalized recommendations and reviews on something they know they want to purchase. In fact, expect more and more sites to automatically serve up friends’ recommendations, ratings and reviews next to goods and services that people are researching.
3. F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions. Over the last decade, online reviews have greatly empowered consumers. But anonymous reviews aren’t always what consumers need or want; they can lack relevance and context. This is where F-FEEDBACK comes in: consumers actively disclosing their purchasing intentions and reaching out to their friends and contacts for personalized feedback.

Some indicators:
• 90 percent of people trust the recommendations of their Facebook friends (Source: ExactTarget, August 2010)
• 31 percent of daily Twitter users ask their followers for opinions about products and services. (Source: Edison Research & Arbitron Internet, April 2010)

One more key driver here: with more and more consumers increasingly viewing their online reputation as something to enhance as well as just protect, the quality of answers is rapidly improving.

Source:  Trendwatching.com, independent and opinionated, is one of the world’s leading consumer trends firm, relying on a global network of hundreds of spotters.Their trends, examples and insights are delivered to 160,000 business professionals in more than 180 countries