A recent survey (n=315, +- 6% at 95% confidence level) conducted by Buzfactor found that a recommendation has 15 times more influence on where a person shops and dines than advertising. When asked, “How likely are you to try a restaurant based on a friends recommendation?”, only 3% responded ‘not likely’ while 71.2% said they ‘would likely or very likely’ try the restaurant.

Interestingly, we found that customers recommend their favorite local businesses as many as 27 times per year and, with recommendations likely being acted upon 71.2% of the time, each customer evangelist a business has potentially generates 19 new customers for their business. Perhaps most important, when asked, “Are the businesses you recommend most often national chains or local businesses?”, 86% of consumers said the businesses they most often recommend are local.  With 6 of every 7 recommendations going to a local business, positive word-of-mouth represents a very effective way for local businesses to compete against the much larger advertising and marketing budgets of national chains, thus levelling the playing field.