An article in Forbes magazine April 7, 2008 gave an interesting perspective on Apple iPhone and iPod 2008 consumer buying trends and outlooks.
While investors may have high hopes, consumers seem to have done most of their intended Apple spending in the first quarter of 2008, with few plans to continue into the rest of the year.
WR Hambrecht conducted a Vizu online market research study on March 26 to determine iPod and iPhone buying trends.
Results pointed to “not surprisingly, weak consumer buying trends” for those products, partly because many had already purchased them in the first calendar quarter of the year. Unless product prices drop or new functionality becomes available, the survey indicated that buying trends would likely decline into the second calendar quarter and remain slow throughout the year.
Next Generation Web Polls based on
Internet’s most powerful online polling
platform
San
Francisco, CA
(PRWEB)
January 23, 2008 -- Vizu Corporation
(www.Vizu.com), the Internet’s first self-serve market research network, today
introduced Power Polls, the latest
way for websites to engage visitors and learn from them.
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selling advertising.
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easiest solution available. Instead of
pasting code for each new poll, My Polls enables publishers to create one
customized “Poll Zone,” then remotely rotate content as needed.
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like ads do.
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visitors to leave the participating web site in order to complete their
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library of custom My Polls that they have created.
Here’s what prominent users
have to say about Vizu Power Polls:
“The data gathered from
Vizu’s Demographic Polls helps us understand Salon.com’s visitors better and
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various sections of our site so our advertisers more effectively reach their
target audiences.”
-- Chris Neimeth, CEO, Salon
"Vizu’s Power Polls
provide an excellent interactive feature where my readers can express and
compare opinions. They love it and when it was taken off for a redesign, they
complained. Vizu Power Polls are reliable and very easy to use. I’ve never had to do a thing since I put the
code on my site months ago."
-- John C. Dvorak, writer
for PC Magazine, MarketWatch, and Dvorak.Org.
“At OKCupid.com, the consumer experience is
our top priority and we are always looking for new ways to engage our
users. Vizu’s fully customizable web
polls blend seamlessly into our site and give our users entertaining content
while also helping us generate revenue and grow as a business.”
-- Sam Yagan, CEO, OkCupid
Power Polls is currently
available for free during a limited trial basis.
About Vizu
Vizu is the Internet’s first
self-serve market
research network. The company
combines an easy-to-use polling platform with a diverse network of websites to
enable fast, affordable market research. Vizu also provides interactive content for websites through its web polls and Power Polls widgets.
Vizu users include Glamour, Orbitz, Sephora, Jobster, Popstar! Magazine, Cozi,
Second Life, TeeBeeDee, TripWiser and is the polling partner for all Wetpaint
Wikis.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California,
the company is privately held with funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bill
Hambrecht, Esther Dyson and Ron Conway. To learn more about Vizu, please visit
www.Vizu.com.
Instant Messaging applications are very common these days - even among business people. It's standard practice in many companies to utilize an instant messaging network to communicate and share files. Of course, businesses are not the only ones using these applications. It's popular between friends and even family members. But which is the best? Which is the most frequently used? Oftentimes these are very different distinctions.
In October of 2007, Vizu conducted a market research survey across hundreds of sites in their network asking which Instant Messaging application was favored. Interestingly, the most popular choice with 40.4% of the votes was Windows Live/MSN Messenger. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) came in much further behind with 17.7%, followed closely by Yahoo! Messenger (16.7%).
Also interesting is that in fourth place was "Other" with 13.7% of the votes. Which application is missing?
Amazon, as well as many nimble online retailers, have been including online customer based product reviews and ratings for many years. Now, however, the king of retailing, Walmart, has finally decided to include customer product reviews as well.
Walmart decision is strongly supported by the data. AdAge reports, "Wal-Mart executives said reviews and ratings were the feature most requested by customers, bearing out other indications of the importance of peer-to-peer approval."
BazaarVoice, the company hired by Walmart to power product reviews on it site, as been conducting research on the value that consumers place on product reviews as well. In August, BazaarVoice released data showing that consumers are increasingly more likely to buy from websites that have product ratings and reviews. In 2007 69% of respondents said that they would be more likely to buy from sites with ratings and reviews versus 63% in 2006.
More recently BazaarVoice released research conducted with Vizu Answers that shows that 80% of US shoppers put more trust in brands that offer consumer reviews. Three out of four shoppers additionally indicate that customer reviews are extremely or very important when making purchases online.
The research also showed that consumers are embracing user generated content. In fact, peer reviews are preferred to expert reviews by a six to one ratio. The Bazaarvoice and Vizu study went on to show that US shoppers consider ratings and reviews to be the most helpful eCommerce site feature (44 percent) versus product comparisons (15 percent), product navigation (12 percent), and privacy information (11 percent).
UK consumers also actively seek out consumer reviews and ratings, though not yet to the same degree that US shoppers do, suggesting an opportunity for some UK based e-tailers to capitalize on this trend.
