Branding Advice: Personal, Media Influences

A new BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey tapped into more than 15,000 people, and explored and classified which kind of consumers offered their opinions on what to buy and where to buy it to family, friends and co-workers.

With word of mouth (WOM) still the "hot topic" in marketing, the key to success targeting, reaching and impacting the WOM process is to find out who the "advice givers" are.

Per the survey, the clusters outlined below (ranked in order of percent who give purchase advice to others are behavior-based and are derived by analyzing media influence, purchase decisions, experiential time and simultaneous usage, says the recap provided by the Center for Media Research.

BIGresearch Media Consumption Clusters

• Opportunity-minded
• Active Explorer
• Ravenous
• Old School
• Persuadables
• New Mediacs
• Simultaneous Readers
• Independent
  

An interesting note from the survey: "advice givers" don't always formulate their counsel on personal experience alone. Media (gasp!) also plays a critical role in molding their advice to others. Sources of identified as the most trusted range from word of mouth to articles to the Internet.