According to a study by Edelman, trust in peers has increased from 20% in 2003 to 68% today. That’s a massive spike.
“We have reached an important juncture, where the lack of trust in established institutions and figures of authority has motivated people to trust their peers as the best sources of information about a company,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO, Edelman. “Companies need to move away from sole reliance on top-down messages delivered to elites toward fostering peer-to-peer dialogue among consumers and employees, activating a company’s most credible advocates.”
In a seeming contradiction to the above statement, articles in business magazines are the most credible source of information about a company, followed closely by the words of friends and family.
via: Digital Hive
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should i trust the results of this study?
If you consider Edelman your peers, yes.
So interesting that this is from 2006. Peer-to-peer commerce is changing the landscape — just search “sharing economy” or “collaborative consumption” — and marketers haven’t moved much past trying to harness social media. There’s a movement to be tapped. We’re talking about that (livestreamed, join us!) on 2/8/12: http://bit.ly/xWspab
Kristine, thanks for following our Archive link from Twitter to this old post. Consumers are the hares, with turtles marketers coming up from behind.
Your upcoming discussion looks interesting…
Ha: yes, marketers = turtles in this case, but I don’t know if “slow and steady” wins this race! Do tune in on the 8th –