Blogs Drive Beauty Product Purchases

Despite increasingly close ties between brands and bloggers, many have asked whether such partnerships bear financial fruit. The answer, according to women's media network BlogHer, is a resounding 'Yes!'

Indeed, according to a study conducted by BlogHer, blogs are more than two times more likely -- 63% -- than magazines -- 26% -- to have inspired a beauty product purchase over the last six months.

What's more, women respondents said they turn to and trust "familiar" bloggers more than store Web sites, social networks or even message boards when seeking beauty product recommendations.

The survey, conducted by BlogHer in conjunction with DeVries Public Relations, attempts to shed light on the huge $7 billion health and beauty products market in the U.S., and more specifically, how online relates to offline purchasing.

"Trusted blogs have as much influence on purchase decisions as traditional media," said Stephanie Smirnov, president of DeVries Public Relations.

Overall, women are just as likely to trust the beauty product advice from a parenting -- 43% -- health -- 42% -- or lifestyle -- 37% -- blog as from a beauty and fashion blog, at 43%.

Still, women buy beauty products offline at a rate four times greater than online, as women say they typically research online and buy offline.

For the "Beauty is in the Eye of the Blog Holder" study, BlogHer fielded a 25-question survey across 25 million BlogHer network users, with a sample size of 1,074 total women across the United States. Along with larger players in the women's lifestyle arena like NBCU's iVillage, Meredith Women's Network, and Glam Media, BlogHer competes against a long list of smaller players, including SheKnows, Total Beauty, and Sugar Inc.

2 comments about "Blogs Drive Beauty Product Purchases".
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  1. Molly Griffin from Dydacomp, January 17, 2011 at 5:31 p.m.

    "blogs are more than two times more likely -- 63% -- than magazines -- 26% -- to have inspired a beauty product purchase over the last six month". This is really interesting statistic considering that magazines have long established relationships with customers. This is a good point for my small businesses could use blogs to help sell their products.

  2. Stephanie Smirnov from DeVries PR, January 18, 2011 at 10:51 a.m.

    Thanks for sharing news of the research our agency recently co-sponsored with BlogHer. I just wanted to add a bit more context to the quote you attributed to me in this post, which I fear comes across as if I'm making a blanket statement that blogs have as much impact on purchase decision as traditional media. What I said in my original quote (in the news release) was that our *hypothesis* was that this was the case, but prior to this research we didn't have data to confirm it. I should add that the research with BlogHer was focused on purchase impact among women shopping the beauty category; we did not quantify the purchase impact of blogs on women shopping other categories. Traditional media continues to be an invaluable tool for brand storytelling and I think I speak for my colleagues at DeVries when I say we have no intention of de-emphasizing magazine outreach for our beauty clients. We will, however, ask our clients to take a fresh look at how they invest resources in blogger outreach based on this research.

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