Online Shoppers Ignore Advertising; Trust Customer Reviews

[zekrahminator]

For the past several years, advertisers have been trying to get new customers by throwing advertisements of their products in their faces. They do this by way of pop-ups, vibrant banners, in-line text, and other crazy methods. A recent survey proposes that customers listen to almost none of that. In fact, most customers were more likely to avoid a product if the advertisement annoyed them. Instead, what really gets consumers to buy a product is positive customer reviews, forums, blogs, and other forms of product recommendations on a more personal level. As if in support of this, other studies conclude that offline influences of purchases are, in order from most to least influential, the recommendation of a friend, magazine/newspaper editorials, salespersons advice, press advertising and clever TV advertising.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[keakar]

so why am i seeing ads like this:

"Related products: Diamond Multimedia Viper RADEON HD 2900 XT, (1 GB) Graphic Card"

"Related products: PNY GeForce 8800 GTX (768 MB)"

on every post that will redirect me to other websites ????????????

i thought TPU was supposed to be spam free???

 

[panchoman]

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=45473

 

[jydie]

Newegg.com has been posting customer reviews on all their products for a long time, and that was one reason I was attracted to them... the other reason was their great prices!

 

[Kreij]

If a manufacturer or retailer has a good product or service they will get more revenue dollars from the people recommending their products or services in these threads than they will see from a few obnoxious ads stuffed in our faces.

Seems kind of prophetic that I just posted the above in the "Forum Ads" thread.

 

[wickerman]

I actually dont see any ads on the forums on my desktop, probably because of the way I have firefox configured to block all the ads from sites I dont allow. I allow ads on TPU and other tech sites except those stupid intelitxt ads. I believe in supporting sites, and I'll even click on the ads every now and again just to give the sites some extra hits, but annoying ads get blocked.

I generally ignore ads because most of the sites you come across just feel shady, they are often poorly made, covered in ads, and any decent prices are overshadowed by shipping costs two or three times what big names like newegg charge. If its a site created through the yahoo shopping engine, such as xoxide.com, sharkacomputers.com, svc.com, etc then I am more willing to buy from them because I know the website wont just disappear over night. I do trust advertising through certain sources though. If a site sends TPU an item for free to review, and the item is worth buying, I have no problem buying it through the site that sent you the item. After all thats why they do this sort of thing. But thats only worth noting up to a point, high dollar items, I'll look towards places like newegg because I like dealing with their policy, returns, support, etc.

I do trust experience of customers over the words of a paid advertiser, much like I would expect anyone else to do the same. If you know someone who bought an item and either loves the item or the place he bought it, I'll take that into consideration, but I will shop around to see who has the best prices and shipping options.

I ignore or block ads on sites because its gotten to the point where its just stupid. Long gone are the days of a simple image banner with an embedded link, now we all have to deal with stupid flash banners and text embedded ads (I hate intelitxt!) which do nothing to win me over. Flash ads make my mobile browsing a nightmare because on my N770 I cant block flash ads, they are always there and that makes sites load much slower on such a limited device. And the text embedded ads just start to confuse things when your actually looking for a proper link in the text and have to deal with the ads taking to places you don't want to go, or worse yet if your the type of person who uses their mouse cursor to trace line by line while reading and article, you end up getting frustrated because of the links popping up windows for you.

I have no problems with image banner ads or text based ads (like googles) but beyond that I would agree that the flash or intelitxt type ads are likely to drive my business away.

 

[3991vhtes]

The funny thing is, the news post says people avoid ad's, but there's ad's here

 

[F-22]

Good! Because ads are F*king annoying!!! Especially the new ones after the first post on these forums...

 

[JC316]

Yo W1z you paying attention? J/K (please don't ban me )

No really, it's true, I would rather read a customer review than see some crap that the company paid for.

 

[spootity1]

i pretty much work like that, the isp i work for has a ton of pissed customers.
im always recommending hardware i"ve used before, our touting the egg from time to time.

on another thought of the same line, my line of work has shown me a few things, when someone calls into a tech support center, and is looking to upgrade a bit, or get a new computer, they almost always ask for my recommendation.
now, the smart company seeing this could exploit it i think that would be more effective than adds. my two cents on that :-D

 

[OnBoard]

newegg user reviews are great for products that don't have reviews yet, or at all. Bad thing is just that not all products that are sold here are sold in US and vice versa.

Then there are some products like 8800GT that has soooo many reviews & user reviews that I'd almost rather see some add about it ny now (well mostly just "in stock" would be enough to most people to buy.

Make a great product and you don't need advertising, there's a lesson to be learned for every manufacturer

 

[Woah Mama!]

I see no ads here. I know there are some forums that have the adbot in them which underlines manufacturers names and comes up with a load of jibber jabber.....

Wow, according to my UK English Firefox, jabber is a proper word. It says Firefox is spelt incorrectly though

 

[Lopez0101]

You still need a way to get the product out there. It could be the best product ever made but if nobody knows about it, then it doesn't do the manufacturer any good. Word of mouth isn't exactly the fastest when it comes to getting a product out there as compared to advertising.

 

[Ravenas]

Yo W1z you paying attention? J/K (please don't ban me )

No really, it's true, I would rather read a customer review than see some crap that the company paid for.

Lol

Would you rather it be:

Related products: PNY GeForce 8800 GTX (768 MB)

Review by: IPWNNUBS WITH THIS CARD
Amount Used: 1 week to 1 year

Pros: This card is the r0xx0rs!! Stable temps, easy setup, I LOVE PNY!!!

Cons: It doesn't have a gig of memory, but who cares this is overkill!

Overall: Awesome card, must buy, you must buy now. DO IT.

Click here to buy at ZipZoomFly.com.

It's really all the same... Advertisements are pure crap and so are customer testimonials. The best thing to go by as far as hardware goes is credited review sites and advice from people on techpowerup . As far as products go, most customers are just biased to that particular product brand, so they will always give the product good reviews no matter what. Sure there are some good reviews out there, but anyone who buys a product solely because of what they see in the customer testimonial section is stupid. As far as trusting customer reviews go, I would have to say take a teaspoon of what you read to your mind. When it comes down to, I'm the one purchasing the item so the only person I will trust is myself.

 

[OnBoard]

You still need a way to get the product out there. It could be the best product ever made but if nobody knows about it, then it doesn't do the manufacturer any good. Word of mouth isn't exactly the fastest when it comes to getting a product out there as compared to advertising.

Well word to writing in TPU forums is a quite a quick way. Then some copypaste to/from another forum and you're set

 

[Lopez0101]

Well I guess by word of mouth I was referring more to face to face with a person. But if it's in a tech community a great product will get plenty of recognition and fast.

 

[OnBoard]

Yes, I got what you meant, that was just what I meant. I knew about 8800GT long before there were any available and didn't need any ads or e-tailer user reviews for that. Those leaked tests were enough that filled forums.

Sure we don't reach the average Joe here, so for the masses advertising is still needed. (if store shoppers that don't read internet can be said a bigger part of byers anymore)

 

[zekrahminator]

Lol

Would you rather it be:



It's really all the same... Advertisements are pure crap and so are customer testimonials. The best thing to go by as far as hardware goes is credited review sites and advice from people on techpowerup . As far as products go, most customers are just biased to that particular product brand, so they will always give the product good reviews no matter what. Sure there are some good reviews out there, but anyone who buys a product solely because of what they see in the customer testimonial section is stupid. As far as trusting customer reviews go, I would have to say take a teaspoon of what you read to your mind. When it comes down to, I'm the one purchasing the item so the only person I will trust is myself.

I love that "IPWNNUBSWITHTHISCARD" fake review .

But really, the point remains the same. If you were to put a customer review in as an advertisement, wouldn't they only choose the good reviews? Instant bias...would put shame to the customer review system.

 

[Kreij]

I love that "IPWNNUBSWITHTHISCARD" fake review .

But really, the point remains the same. If you were to put a customer review in as an advertisement, wouldn't they only choose the good reviews? Instant bias...would put shame to the customer review system.

Advertisers already use customer "testimonials" in their ads.
It makes no difference what they do, advertisements are biased by nature.

I don't think you will ever see a "We suck, but buy one anyway" kind of honest ad

 

[effmaster]

Advertisers already use customer "testimonials" in their ads.
It makes no difference what they do, advertisements are biased by nature.

I don't think you will ever see a "We suck, but buy one anyway" kind of honest ad

Thats funny because I heard on the radio this morning during an advertisement the following:

Come get the new "such and such name" Police radar detector blocker it blocks up to 3 miles and if you get a speeding ticket within the next 90 days we will pay it for you, and then they say at the end of the advertisement "obviously we don't condone reckless driving" and they just leave it at that

 

[3991vhtes]

Good! Because ads are F*king annoying!!! Especially the new ones after the first post on these forums...

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