The top three types of searches are through social networking sites (45.8%), chat rooms (44.7%), and blogs (33.1%), and men have a greater tendency to use chat rooms, while women are more likely to use social networking sites.

According to MIC, the survey found that in Taiwan 50.4% of men tend to use chat rooms to exchange reviews about products, followed by social networking sites (46.3%) and blogs (26.7%). On the other hand, women used social networking sites as their primary channel for exchanging reviews about products, followed by chat rooms (38.9%) and blogs (39.7%).

MIC industry analyst, Chen Yang-xuan stated that currently domestic consumers’ exchange of information and product reviews are most frequently concentrated in social networking sites. Consumers are in the habit of choosing different channels for exchanging product reviews according to the characteristics of the products. Therefore, businesses should understand consumers’ demands and habits when searching for product reviews online and view them as important sources of information to consider when putting new products of the market or planning annual marketing strategies.

Furthermore, analysis of different age groups found that consumers under 19 years of age (53.2%) and over 40 years of age (46.6%) both used social networking as their primary channel for exchanging product reviews. Consumers aged 20 to 29 (50.2%) and 30 to 39 (52.2%) both tended to search for product information and reviews in chat rooms.

The results of MIC’s survey of consumers’ sources of information when searching for information about products’ reputations revealed that nearly 80% of consumers found information learned from close relatives and friends (77.7%) to be the most reliable, followed by information learned from friends on social networking sites (44.8%), information shared in chat rooms (44%), and information shared by peers on sites that evaluate and compare products (34%).

In addition, for information shared by famous people, well-known Internet users, or bloggers or merchandise introduced by Internet forum editors or moderators, the degree of credibility did not exceed 25%. For recommendations by famous people, the degree of credibility was only 12.2%, which was less than for well-known Internet users and blogs (24.1%).

(Tr/Phil Sweeney)