PwC analysts came to the conclusion: Facebook is the priority social network in terms of shopping today. More than half of the respondents to the global PwC sample (52%) said they regularly use Facebook as part of their consumer experience. True, the situation is very different for individual countries, as are the ways of using social networks - they vary greatly. For example, China has the most turbulent life in social networks, but they are very different from Western ones. Access to Facebook in the country is blocked, so only 2% of Chinese respondents use it, and the most popular ones are the WeChat / Weixin network service and the Chinese Baidu search engine (57%). In Russia, 24% of buyers use the Facebook network, and VKontakte (1%) takes the 48 place. In Japan, the leaders are Yahoo (31%) and Facebook (26%). From European countries, Facebook is very popular for shopping in Italy (64%). In Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, Facebook is also in first place in the list of preferences of customers, but there are fewer users. In the USA, half of the respondents use it, in South Africa - 69%, and in the Middle East - 80%.
So, for making purchases, modern buyers in different countries and parts of the world most often use the following social media: Facebook (52%), Google / Google Plus (31%), YouTube (25%), Twitter (14%), Yahoo, Instagram (by 8%), Whats'app (7%), Pinterest, Linkedin, Baidu (by 4%), Bing, VK (by 3%), WeChat / Weixin, Ozone / QQ, Sina weibo (by 2%), Tumbir, Renren, Tencent weibo, Pengyou, MySpace (1%). 21% of PwC respondents do not use these and any services.
Two Ways to Develop Social Media
In Asian countries, and in China in particular, social media and shopping are closely intertwined. There, only 5% of those surveyed said they do not use any social networking services for shopping. In European countries, this figure is much higher, although many Europeans are well informed, technically literate, and wealthy. Thus, two transnational models of the future of social media are possible: the closely networked Chinese model (it is also typical for other developing countries - Brazil, India, Turkey), when social networks are widely used for shopping, and the traditional European model (also typical for Japan) where a more relaxed attitude towards shopping and social media is little used to make purchases, their impact on shoppers (urge to buy) is relatively weak.
The future of social networks in Russia
Russia is somewhere between these two models: 45% of Russian consumers make more purchases after interacting with brands on social networks (the global average is 62%). One of the possible reasons is the difference in the functionality of VKontakte and Facebook: the first network is not as convenient for commercial use as the second. Another reason is that today retailers do not use all
This article is based on the PwC annual global study on multichannel retail sales, Total Sales, 2015
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