Media Influence on Purchase Decisions

Point-of-purchase information has a greater influence on final purchase decisions for apparel, food and consumer electronics than any other means of product communication, according to a recent survey conducted by Decision Analyst, Arlington, TX.Asked what types of information influenced their final purchase decisions, a group of nearly 600 consumers cited in-store print/point-of-purchase more often than information obtained from TV, print or radio advertising, direct mail, the Internet or even word-of-mouth advice. P-O-P information was also rated highly in purchase decisions for health-related products and, surprisingly, for automobiles.According to the study, P-O-P has the strongest relative impact in the apparel category, where 53% of respondents said that information within the store influenced their final purchase decisions. Print advertising was next, cited by 24% of respondents, followed by word-of-mouth at 16%.P-O-P also has a relatively powerful effect in the food category, where 46% of respondents noted it as an influence, followed by print ads at 29% and word-of-mouth at 24%.For consumer electronics, the disparity is less pronounced: 46% of consumers cite P-O-P, 45% word-of-mouth and 43% information gathered via the Internet. While the effect of P-O-P is roughly equal between men and women, women are much more influenced by word-of-mouth (49%) and men by Internet information (51%), according to survey results.For the purchase of health-related products, the effect of word-of-mouth advice is only marginally better than P-O-P information, according to the survey, with 34.6% of respondents citing the former and 33.7% the latter. However, men more often identified P-O-P than word-of-mouth (36% vs. 30%); among women, the opposite was true (40% vs. 32%).For automobile purchases, both word-of-mouth (noted by 47% of respondents) and Internet information (42%) have a much stronger impact on purchases than P-O-P (31%). But P-O-P was cited slightly more often than TV ads and significantly more often than any of the other communication types.Decision Analyst asked the question as part of a larger study on consumer attitudes and buying habits conducted in March 2005 using the company's American Consumer Opinion Online Panel. The study's margin of error is plus or minus 4%.

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