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SME study reveals social media users show brand loyalty

By Eva Laureano
For News is my Business

About 72.8 percent of the people in Puerto Rico who use social media are “fans” of a brand or follow it. Of those, 73 percent said social media influences their decisions on what to purchase while 71 percent said they use coupons for their purchases.

Those were the results of a study presented Thursday during a Sales Executives and Marketing Association power lunch.

The study, titled “La Marca Enredada,” (“The Networked Brand”) relied on 669 participants from the SME and other data banks who were invited to complete surveys. For that reason, Luis Rodríguez-Báez, vice president of Estudios Tecnicos, a local research firm, said the study did not have margin of error.

Around 98.2 percent of the participants have Facebook accounts; 54.9 percent in YouTube; 49.9 percent in Google+; 47.8 percent in Twitter; 32.7 percent in LinkedIn; 27.4 percent in Instagram; 23.6 percent in My Space; 16.6 percent in Pinterest; 12.6 percent in Blog side; 7.2 percent in flickr; and 4.6 percent in Vmail.

“Most people are in Facebook but the market is segmenting itself,” Rodríguez-Báez said.

When asked how many times they used social media, around 76 percent of the participants said they used Facebook several times during the day, followed by Twitter, which was used several times a day by 38 percent of them, and Instagram, which was used by 38 percent of the surveyed group.

“Around 72.8 percent of the participants in the ‘Marca Enredada’ study said they followed a brand, which indicates a high number,” Rodríguez-Báez said.

Facebook outranks popular online brands
Radames Rosado, a strategist and brand developer, said among the brands people most followed in social media were Facebook with 18.1 percent; followed by Coca Cola with 11.9 percent; El Nuevo Día, with 10 percent; Gustazos, with 8.5 percent; Google, with 6.9 percent and Burger King, with 5.5 percent.

However, only 19.3 percent of the people who follow brands issue opinions about them on a frequent basis and only 4.6 percent said they do it always.

Facebook also came up first as the most trustworthy and innovative brand. Around 5.7 percent of the participants said they did not trust any brand and 5.4 percent said they trusted Sony.

Apple came in second as the most innovative brand with 8.4 percent of the vote and Sony came in third with 5.2 percent of the vote.

Participants also said Facebook was the brand that mostly reflected their style and the one that had the most fans. Apple came in second as the brand of which most people wanted to be a fan.

Facebook also came in first as the brand with the best promotions, with 13.5 percent of the vote, followed by Coca Cola with 6.6 percent of the vote, and Burger King with 4.8 percent of the vote.

Social media influences purchases
Rosado said 73 percent of the participants said social media influences what they purchase and 44 percent consults social media followers about what to buy. Around 71 percent uses coupons they obtain through social media promotions to make purchases.

Although the sample for the study was not selected randomly as required of all marketing studies, rather by invitation, Rodríguez-Báez said statistician Carlos Torijo adjusted the sample according to a previous “Digital and Mobile Study,” whose sample was chosen randomly, to obtain a similar distribution based on gender and income.

They, nonetheless, did not adjust the ages of the sample of participants because they wanted to have a higher number of people who make decisions about purchases.

Therefore, 67.7 percent of those interviewed were between the ages of 25 to 54 while 27.8 percent were between the ages of 18 to 24 and 4.5 percent were older than 55 years of age.

“This is a scientific study. The profiles were adjusted in terms of gender and income to a random study,” Rodríguez-Báez said.

The survey also asked about different brand categories. Around 66.2 percent of the participants followed technology brands; 46.6 percent, colleges; 44.1 percent, beauty products; 39.2 percent, cars; 27.5 percent, methods of payment; 24.5 percent, cookies; 20.9 percent, bread products; 14.1 percent, salted cookies; 10.6 percent, analgesics; 6.1 percent, insurance products; and 4.2 percent, car insurance products.

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This story was written by our staff based on a press release.
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1 Comment

  1. Damandeep Singh November 30, 2012

    Your blog shared excellent information on sme show.The show
    is the place where more number of small or big enterprise take a part. As per
    seeing the interest of entrepreneurs in SME sector, we are going to conduct 3rd
    annual national convention on small business that will be held in December
    17-18,at The Lalit, Mumbai.

    Reply

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