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March 2014 - Retail

According to a recent YouGov study of 1,096 UK adults, two fifths (42%) believe that social media sites should be used to interact with friends and not with retailers.

Perhaps more surprisingly, it was found that more than half (57%) of the 16-24 year olds surveyed don’t like sites such as Twitter and Facebook to be linked with their purchasing history, whilst almost three-fifths (61%) like to keep their social networking and online shopping activity separate.

This is in comparison to the overall figures, which saw only two-fifths (39%) say they like to keep their social networking separate from e-commerce habits.

James McCoy, Research Director at YouGov, points out:

 “This is something they [retailers] will need to address if they are to effectively deploy online marketing budgets.

The rise of social networks over the past decade has coincided with the growth of online shopping and many retailers have tried to harness the power of sites such as Facebook to increase sales. However, it appears that consumers prefer to keep their shopping and social sites separate, with online consumers not trusting retailers that are on the likes of Twitter.”

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