A recent survey conducted by Rubicon Consulting showed that reviews received through word of mouth have more influence on American buyers than online or written reviews.

 

The survey underlined the importance of online information in driving purchase decisions, but the most influential information is beyond the direct control of companies selling products and services.

 

Rubicon Consulting is a strategy and marketing consultancy designed specifically for the needs of tech companies. The company claims to have the expertise to point out the realities in the business.

 

"Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily," said Harry Max, a principal at Rubicon Consulting.

 

The Rubicon Consulting advises companies to make more of an effort to reach out to these online communities.

 

The study also found that the Web is used in order to garner info about products even before users think to call product manufacturers or dealers. Web site categories that get the most daily usage are search, social communities like MySpace and Facebook (News - Alert), general news Web sites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com, and online banking.

 

The report also tries to categorize the variety and nature of the posts written online. Young Americans (age 22 and under) tend to be noisier than older ones and they account for about half of all the content and comments posted online. Social media sites, wikis, blogs are also the places users tend to look up for info on their products.

 

The report notes that most Web users are consumers of information, not creators. About 80 percent of user generated content on the Web, including comments and questions, is created by less than 10 percent of Web users. But despite the low content creation rates, online communities have enormous influence on almost all Web users. The personal reviews from them are far more influential than official reviews posted by a Web site or magazine, or information posted online by a manufacturer.

 

The study, developed by Max and Rubicon Principal, Michael Mace, also confirmed the power of most frequent contributors -- the 9 percent of Web users who produce 80 percent of all user-generated content. According to officials, the survey covered 3,036 active Internet users in the United States, and should be projectable to the U.S. Web-using population, about 75 percent of the U.S. population ages 13 and up.