Product Research on Social Media Rising

From the integration of chat bots into Facebook Messenger to the recent launch of Facebook Marketplace, social networks have been attempting to facilitate more and more commerce on their platforms.

As Thursday’s chart demonstrates, it’s easy to see why so many are committed to making social commerce work. Our data confirms that social networks are becoming an increasingly important touchpoint for product research: it’s now 37% of internet users who turn to social networks to carry out research on brands or products – a marked increase on the 28% seen back in mid-2015.

No less revealing is that, among 16-24s, social networks are now just 6 percentage-points behind search engines as the number one port-of-call for product research. So, look no further than the youngest consumers if you want to predict where these new features will have the biggest impact.