Product Sampling immediately boosts awareness/sales & increases Influence over Consumers.

Product sampling successfully reaches 70 million consumers every quarter and secures considerable results in both brand awareness and loyalty, according to the Product Sampling Study by Arbitron Inc.

One-third of customers who try a sample will buy the sampled product in the same shopping trip. In addition, sampling overall influences future purchases of a product. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed reported that they would buy the product again.

Consumers were grouped into three categories: “Acquisitions” are those who were new to the sampled product; “Conversions” are those who had heard of the product but had never bought it and; “Retentions” are those who had previously purchased the product.

While 85 percent of the Retentions and 60 percent of the Conversions said they would purchase the sampled product in the future, sampled products encouraged nearly half (47 percent) of the Acquisitions, those who had never heard of the product before, to purchase the product again.

“This is exciting news for marketers and advertisers who are looking for alternative ways to make an immediate as well as long reaching impact on consumers with a high return-on-investment,” said Carol Edwards, Senior Vice President, Sales, Out-of-Home Media. “This study enforced that the sampling approach is both effective in making new customers aware of products, while also establishing a firmer identity with those consumers who have considered the product before.”

Highlights

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed reported that they have been offered product samples within the past three months.

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed claimed they had accepted product samples. Sixty-six percent of the customers characterized as Acquisitions accepted samples, as well as 63 percent of the Conversions, and 63 percent of the Retentions.

Thirty-five percent of those surveyed claimed they purchased the sampled product on the same day. Twenty-six percent of the Acquisitions bought the product right away, as well as 19 percent of the Conversions, and 31 percent of the Retentions.

Twenty-four percent of those survey claimed that a sampled product had specifically replaced an item that they had planned on buying: Twenty percent of the Acquisitions were planning to make the switch, as well as 33 percent of the Conversions, and 18 percent of the Retentions.

How This Study Was Conducted

Arbitron and Edison Media Research conducted a national telephone survey from January 18 to February 15, 2008. 1,857 respondents, ages 12 and older, were selected at random from Arbitron’s 2007 fall diarykeepers. In geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available (representing 8% of the population), a supplemental sample was interviewed through random selection.

For more information at http://www.arbitron.com/study/product_sampling.asp>