Quick Study: CEOs Value Social Media More Than Others in C-Suite; People Prefer Pinterest for Purchasing—Facebook Pales

â–¶ CEOs View Social Differently Than C-Suite Colleagues: Chief executive officers are nearly twice as likely as chief information officers to view social collaboration tools as important to their business today (28% versus 15%), while only 14% of chief financial officers surveyed identify social tools as important, according to a study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte released in May 2012.

Interview data from the study of more than 3,400 corporate leaders across industries suggests that many CIOs struggle with an unarticulated vision for how they want to use social business corporate-wide. Study highlights include:

• While a clear vision and leadership are cited most frequently as critical to adoption of social software, the most common answer to the question, “How do you measure social software use?” is: “not measured.”

• The largest organizations, those with over 100,000 employees, and the smallest organizations, those with fewer than 1,000 employees, tend to appreciate the value of social business today more than midsize organizations.

• Respondents saw the most business value in social software in the areas of “managing customer relationships” and “innovating for competitive differentiation.”

• Identifying industry sectors where social business is thriving, the report divides them into two categories: entertainment, media and publishing (media) and information technology (tech). Eighty-eight percent of media industry managers believe their companies are open to new ideas, and 68% consider themselves innovative. For tech, it was 77% and 69%, respectively.

• A majority of respondents (52%) believe that social business is important important to their business today. A total of 86% of respondents believe social business will be important or somewhat important in three years.

Source: MIT Sloan Management Review/Deloitte

â–¶ Pinterest Fans Are Purchasers: Pinterest users are far more likely to purchase items they see posted on the site compared to the purchasing behavior of Facebook users viewing items they’ve seen on their news feed or a friend’s wall, according to a survey released in late May 2012 from behavioral commerce company SteelHouse. The survey finds that Pinterest users are 79% more likely to purchase items they saw pinned on Pinterest versus Facebook users. Other findings include:

• 33% of Facebook users say they have purchased a product or service they’ve seen in a Facebook ad, on the news feed or on a friend’s wall, in comparison to the 59% of Pinterest users who have made a purchase based on an item they saw on Pinterest.

• 55% of shoppers prefer to share their purchases on Facebook, followed by Twitter (22%), Pinterest (14%) and Instagram (5%).

• 98% of shoppers say that online customer reviews have a major influence on their decision to purchase a product or service; 72% of consumers shared that they always read reviews before making a purchase, while 26% of consumers only sometimes read reviews before purchasing.

• 68% of shoppers say they rate and review products on a regular basis. The top product categories they write reviews on are electronics (23%), DVDs/CDs/MP3s (14%), and books and clothing (both 13%). PRN

Source: SteelHouse