Romanians expressing their opinions: more ranting and criticism online than offline

Romanians rant more and are more critical online than offline, according to a GfK Romania research that studied Romanian consumers’ opinions regarding the influence of word of mouth.

According to the study, the main word of mouth (WOM) channel is direct, through voice, as 94% of study’s subjects mentioned face to face communication as being on the 1st place as channel that generates WOM, while 5% mentioned phone calls. Offline, Romanians are generating more positive than negative WOM.

Opposite from offline, Romanians are generating more negative WOM when they are online. To generate online WOM, Romanians are using “messenger”, than e-mails, forums and social networks.

At general level, both offline and online, the frequency for positive WOM is bigger than for the negative one (2:1). Moreover, 55% of Romanians can’t remember when they last generated negative WOM, probably because they made negative recommendations a long time ago, while 11% say they never generated negative WOM about a product.

The main group of people that generate both positive and negative WOM are friends, followed by relatives / family and colleagues.

Word of Mouth influences Romanians’ buy intentions, over 50% being influenced by the recommendations coming from friends, relatives or colleagues. This way, consumers take in consideration more WOM when it comes of health services and electronics, computers and tech (TV, personal computer, mobile phone, photo camera etc) and less when it comes of economies or investments.

These info are part of GfK Omnibus Study, made in April-May 2011, on a sample of 1,656 people.