Dubai: When it comes to making purchase decisions, consumers tend to trust the advice and opinions of their friends and family more than the giant billboards on streets or celebrity endorsements on TV or online.
According to the latest Nielsen Global Survey of Trust in Advertising, which polled more than 30,000 consumers in 60 countries, word-of-mouth recommendations remain the most credible form of advertising today.
About eight in ten (85 per cent) UAE consumers said they turn to the people they know for feedback or recommendations before parting with their cash. The number of people who trust recommendations from friends and family has increased slightly from 84 per cent in 2013.
“Word of mouth plays a very vital role in the consumers’ decision-making process. With the explosion of social media – especially in Middle East – the importance and efficacy of word of mouth has increased greatly,” said Arslan Ashraf, managing director, Nielsen Arabian Peninsula.
Nielsen’s survey seeks to measure consumer sentiment in 19 forms of paid, earned and owned advertising media. The results identify the ad formats that resonate most strongly with consumers and those that have room to grow.
However, while the survey’s findings tend to favour word-of-mouth marketing, this doesn’t mean that mainstream advertising is dead.
In fact, confidence in traditional forms of advertising is growing as well, with 75 per cent of consumers saying they still trust the advertisements they see in print or newspapers, up by four percentage points from the previous survey in 2013.
More and more people are also turning to social media for recommendations, with 74 per cent of UAE respondents, up 7 percentage points from 2013, indicating that customer comments or feedback online also matter when it comes to making buying decisions.
Ashraf said that while word of mouth is increasingly impacting consumers’ perceptions of a brand, it is important that companies should not ignore the power of traditional forms of advertising.
“Nevertheless, traditional means of advertising are still highly relevant and should not be ignored at this juncture. Their relevance in relation to word-of-mouth activity is key to understand and utilize.”
Among the respondents polled for the survey, seven in ten (70 per cent) said they completely or somewhat trust ads, up one percentage point from 2013.
However, there seems to be fewer consumers who trust radio and television ads (both 67 per cent), up four and three percentage points, respectively, from a couple of years ago.
Other forms of ads are increasing in popularity, with 57 per cent of consumers saying they completely or somewhat trust online video ads, up 11 percentage points from 2013.
Confidence in ads served in search engine results is also increasing (54 per cent, up eight percentage points), as well as ads on social networks (59 per cent, up eight percentage points.
Online banner ads are being trusted by 55 per cent of UAE consumers (up 10 percentage points), while mobile advertisements have gained the trust of 54 per cent of consumers, up six percentage points.
