January 15th, 2024, Lesley Simeon
Beyond celebrity endorsements, fashion trends and personal taste, does word-of-mouth influence consumers’ pick of clothes? A recent YouGov survey asked consumers across 17 international markets whether word-of-mouth helps them make purchase decisions across various categories of products and services.
Polling data reveals that consumers are least likely to say word-of-mouth helps them to some degree when buying clothes. A little over one in ten (12%) consumers across markets say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal, less than three in ten (28%) say it helps them a fair amount.
On the other hand, nearly a third of consumers across markets (32%) say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them very much when buying clothes and two in ten consumers (20%) say it doesn’t help them at all.
Let’s now look at, by market, how helpful consumers feel word-of-mouth is when buying clothes
Word-of-mouth either helps a great deal or a fair amount
Consumers in the UAE (31%) and India (30%) are most likely across all markets to say that word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when making clothes-related purchase decisions. On the other hand, Swedes (3%) and Danes (3%) are least likely to agree.
Over two in five consumers in Indonesia (45%) and India (41%) claim that word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount when buying clothes. In Europe, nearly four in ten Poles (38%) say the same - the most likely in this region to say so.
Conversely, Singaporeans (32%) and Swedes (14%) are the least likely in Asia and Europe respectively to say word-of-mouth helps them when purchasing clothes.
Word-of-mouth either doesn’t help very much or doesn’t help at all
Consumers in Sweden (43%) account for the largest proportion of those across markets who said word-of-mouth doesn’t help them very much when buying clothes. Britons (42%) and Singaporeans (42%) follow Swedes in sharing this opinion. Within the US, consumers are most likely to say that word-of-mouth is not of much help to them (31%).
Among those who find word-of-mouth of no help at all in buying clothes, consumers in our Nordic markets lead - a little over a third in both, Sweden and Denmark (34% each).
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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.