December 11th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
Choosing a financial product is wildly different from picking a pack of chips off a store shelf or selecting a TV. For a process as involved as buying financial products, to what extent do consumers value the opinions of their friends and family?
Findings from a recent YouGov survey conducted across 17 international markets revealed that more than one in ten (13%) consumers say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when buying financial and investment products. More than a quarter of consumers (28%) say word-of-mouth helps a fair amount in this regard, while 23% note it doesn’t help them very much.
Data also shows that 14% of consumers feel word-of-mouth simply doesn’t help at all.
Going by YouGov’s demographic data, we see that it’s younger audiences who rely more heavily on recommendations from friends, family or colleagues. Almost a third of 18-to-34-year-olds (32%) and more than a quarter of 35-to-54-year-olds (28%) say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when buying financial products and services.
Further, 59% of 18-to-34-year-olds and 62% of 35-to-54-year-olds say it helps them a fair amount
In comparison, only around a third of consumers aged 55 or more say that word-of-mouth helps them either a great deal or a fair amount.
Younger consumers - i.e. 18-to-34-year-olds are most likely (30%) to say they do not purchase financial and investment products. More than a quarter of 35-to-54-year-olds (27%) and two in ten 55+year-olds same the same.
Let’s now look at how helpful word-of-mouth is for consumers, by market, when buying financial products.
Helps consumers a great deal or a fair amount
Except Singapore, the Asian markets we survey are in the top five in our list of markets where consumers are most likely to say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when purchasing financial and investments products. Hong Kong, Mexico and UAE take the first three spots (28% each), followed by India (25%) and Indonesia (24%).
Singaporeans are the least likely in Asia to say word-of-mouth helps a great deal (14%) and consumers in Sweden, France and Italy are the least likely across all markets (5% each) to say so.
As for those who say word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount when purchasing financial and investments products, Hong Kong leads (43%), and Indonesia and Singapore (37%) follow.
In Europe, a quarter of consumers in France, Denmark, Germany and Spain (25% each) agree that word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount. Notably, more than one in ten consumers in Poland and Germany (11%) say they don’t know whether word-of-mouth is of help or not, in buying financial products.
Less than a quarter of consumers in the US and Great Britain (23%) feel word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount when buying financial products with smaller, single-digit proportions saying it helps them a lot.
Doesn’t help consumers much or doesn’t help them at all
A third of Swedes (33%) feel word-of-mouth doesn’t help them very much when they set out to purchase financial and investments products - the most likely across all markets to say so. Canada (28%), Denmark (27%) and Italy (27%), Singapore (27%) and Australia (27%) follow Sweden.
The Swedes are also most likely across markets to say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them at all (23%). Fellow European markets Italy (20%) and France (19%) follow Sweden.
In Asia, Indians and Singaporeans (9%) are most likely to say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them at all in buying financial products.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 508 and 2001 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in September 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash