How Consumers Use Social Networks to Connect with Food Retailers: Who’s Posting Online Reviews?

Our results show that about half of all respondents posted reviews online.  Participants in older age groups were less likely to post, while those in higher income categories were more likely to post.  We asked respondents to indicate where they posted positive and negative reviews.  Table 1 shows that the most frequently used sites to post were the business’s website, a retail site, reviewer sites (e.g. Yelp.com) and Facebook.  This is true for both positive and negative reviews, although more people posted positive reviews than negative ones.  We found that those in higher income categories were more likely to post positive reviews on the business’s site or on a retail site, such as Amazon.  However, those same individuals were less likely to post positive reviews on their own website or on Facebook.

Table 1.  Percentage of participants who have posted online reviews on select websites sites.

As we have seen in other articles, those in younger age groups were much more likely to use social media.  In Table 2, you can see that nearly three out of four people between ages 18 to 24 used Facebook to post positive reviews. That percentage falls to well under 50% for participants age 49 and older.  We also found that those with higher education levels were more likely to post positive reviews.  Table 3 shows that those with a master’s degree or higher are 19% points more likely to post positive reviews on reviewer websites than participants with a high school degree or less.

Table 2.  Percentage of participants, based on age group, who have posted positive online reviews on Facebook.

Table 3.  Percentage of participants, by education level, who have posted positive online reviews on Facebook. 

Younger participants were significantly more likely to post negative reviews online.  Table 4 shows that over half of participants age 18 to 24 have posted a negative review on Facebook while less than one third of participants age 49 and older have.  The same general pattern exists for other online outlets; in Table 4 we also show results for negative reviews posted on Twitter and on a friend’s or family member’s website. 

In general, posting negative reviews on Facebook decreased with income levels (Table 5), while posting negative reviews on reviewer sites increased with education levels (Table 6). Forty-six percent of those with at least a master’s degree posted negative reviews on reviewer sites while only 24% of those with a high school education or less did.

Figure 4.  Percentage of participants, by age group, who have posted negative online reviews on select websites.

Table 5.  Percentage of participants, by age group, who have posted negative online reviews on reviewer websites (e.g. Yelp.com).

Table 6.  Percentage of participants, by education level, who have posted negative on reviewer websites (e.g. Yelp.com).

We can draw two conclusions from these data.  First, younger respondents are using social media to make buying decisions and to provide feedback for others to use. If we think of social media as the new word of mouth, then the relatively young are the most vocal.  Second, many are using third party review sites, such as Yelp.com. A business should assess what is being said about it on those sites.

Thank you for reading this article series and viewing our YouTube channel.  While we found some very interesting and, hopefully, useful results across demographic categories, our results revealed some strong implications for food retailers considering all customers.  We hope these have been useful to food retailers and other business owners.  Thank you for joining us.  Please contact us with any questions or other feedback (djm428@psu.edu).