Second Course on Food & Dining WOM
by John Moore, TalkTrack® Conversationalist, March 7, 2011Tags: Brands, Food & Dining, Keller Fay Group, research, Social media, TalkTrack®, WOM, word of mouth
We’re in the middle of our three-course meal sharing interesting research from a client-only Keller Fay TalkTrack® report about the Food & Dining category. In our first course, we shared how active Americans are in talking about food & dining brands and which brands they most often mention. For this dish, we’ll serve up the gender differences that exist and share how credible and actionable word of mouth conversations about food & dining brands are.
Americans who talk about food & dining brands skew female. According to Keller Fay, the male/female split is close to 50/50 for all marketing-related word of mouth conversations. However, for food & dining brands, the split is 55% women and 45% men. It’s clear. Women are more active than men in engaging in conversations with others about fast food chains, casual dining restaurants, grocery stores, and packaged food brands.
We know “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” What we might not know is when it comes to talking about food & dining brands, men and women generally talk about the same brands.
The biggest difference is women talk about Starbucks much more than men. As a former corporate marketing manager with Starbucks, this WOM statistic matches my understanding of the Starbucks customer base. (Disclosure: From 1994 through 2003, I worked as a retail marketer with Starbucks Coffee.) Women comprise about 55% of the Starbucks customer base. They also frequent Starbucks more regularly than men and the drinks they purchase are more expensive and more indulgent.
Another difference is Gerber, a baby food manufacturer, ranks very high with women as a brand they talk about often. (Men also talk about the Gerber brand, but women talked about it much more.)
Getting a brand mentioned in everyday conversations should be the goal of every marketer. One measure of word of mouth marketing success is earning a recommendation. Food & dining brands elicit strong recommendations from Americans. When men and women talk about food & dining brands, 57% of the time it comes with a strong “Buy It or Try It” recommendation. The product category average, as measured by Keller Fay, for a strong “Buy It or Try It” recommendation is 41%.
Once a brand has earned a strong recommendation, it also needs to inspire action in order to turn the word of mouth recommendation into a purchase. Word of mouth recommendations for food & dining brands lead to a higher purchase intent than the all-category average.
According to Keller Fay TalkTrack® data, some marketing tactics work better in sparking word of mouth conversations about food & dining brands. Billboards are less likely to spark WOM about food & dining brands. Television advertising is more likely to spark WOM. In-store point of sale activities are also likely to spark WOM about food & dining brands. But the most likely marketing tactic to spark word of mouth involves traditional promotional activities such as couponing and sampling.
Another effective way to spark brand-related conversations is through Conversation Catalysts™. These are Americans who disproportionately share advice within their social circles about brands, products, and services. In the final course of our three-course meal on food & dining WOM, we’ll look at the influence of Conversation Catalysts™.
Feed
