Mos Place Trust in Other Consumers

Just read an article on eMarketer about the information gathering and trust habits of moms online. Here's the abstract: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007509

What jumped out at me wasn't the raw data in the article. Essentially, 93% of the moms surveyed trust other consumers more than manufacturer descriptions. How sad is that? And where does the ultimate responsibility for that lie? Most of those descriptions are presented on ecommerce sites. Doesn't that make the ultimate responsibility the ecommerce retailer's? Sure, the information comes from the manufacturer, and there really is no way for a retailer to be a sufficiently informed expert to validate all product claims in description form. Still....why isn't this worth the time and effort by retailers to manage, police, and monitor?

The next set of numbers had to do with what influenced a purchase....these were online moms doing product research. The number one most influential medium: in-store display! Which only shows that moms that shop in-store start and do research online. Another huge number was that for Consumer Information Site or magazine....44% were influenced by this. A wonderful source of objective information designed to aid consumers in making more informed purchase decisions.....

Sadly, for the retailer, these sites are product and brand agnostic.....and are doing everything possible to enable the consumer to have enough information so that price becomes the dominant decision on where to shop.

As noted earlier, retail-centric video programming created to empower consumers to make better shopping decisions and presented ON THE RETAILER'S WEBSITE fulfill most of the purpose of these 3rd party information sites.....AND they support the retail brand, can be made instantly shop-able, and support the retailer's assortment.