Nielsen completed a global survey - 26,000+ consumers in 47 markets - which has confirmed that consumers place the greatest trust in... recommendations from other consumers. Well, we all knew that, but its good to have some more confirmation.

More interesting was the size of the gap between consumer recommendations, and other media/channels - see below.

I wonder whether the scale of this is making an impact on CMO budgeting plans? In tech, yes, we see it already. We are getting a lot of interest in programs and technology to support this requirement. Elsewhere, I'm not so sure.

I was also struck by the regional variation around trust in consumer recommendation - see below. Most prominent was the fact Asian countries placed the greatest amount of trust, Europeans the least.

This data doesn't quite map direct to the types of customer advocacy and community engagement programs we run for our clients (Neilsen's questions are very consumer-to-consumer oriented) but I suspect the national traits and behaviours in terms of valuing personal testimonials, do carry through to our B2B environment.

Strangely, our challenge in running customer reference programs is often greatest in those Asian markets where, although they place high levels of trust in personal recommendation, they want those recommendations to be sourced personally, ie outside structured programs.

Ben McConnell provides his take on this report too - here - he sees the seeds of a threat to the plethora of recommendation web sites. If trust is undermined, so too is their purpose.

Tags: Customer Advocacy, Consumer Recommendation, Neilsen Group