Social media not impacting on purchases

A new report compiled in conjunction with Forrester Research and online giant GSI Commerce has found that social media doesn’t necessarily influence purchasing behaviour.

The study was conducted between November 12 and December 20 last year in the United States, and has found that less than 2% of orders were made because of a reference from any type of social networking site.

“The best analogy is in the South, a lot of people go to church on Sunday,” Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for GSI Commerce, told Mashable.

“If you go with the theory that you should market where the people are, then you should be running off to market during church services. Facebook has the same analogy. Buying things from retailers is maybe 10th on the list of things they want to do on Facebook.”

The study also found that 77% of transactions in hard goods and 82% in soft goods happened after some interactive marketing was involved.