LexisNexis has issued its 2009 Online Ratings Survey, an online survey of 561 legal professionals, small business owners and consumers that was conducted by Lightspeed Research in April 2009. The survey has been reported on extensively online, including at XML Journal and WebProNews. The full results are available here. The surprising results of the survey are that small business owners are active users of these sites – even more so than consumers.

Here are some of the highlights:

• 87% of small business owners surveyed and 63% of consumers have provided feedback on review and ratings web sites.
• More than half of small business owners and 43% of consumers believed that review and rating web sites mean businesses are held to higher standards.
• Businesses tended to trust independent third party ratings, while a majority of consumers considered reviews from actual customers to be more trustworthy.
• Businesses’ greatest area of concern was false and malicious reviews.

More recently, a “mom-centered” site called momconnection.com surveyed 583 mothers with children under 12 (out of their panel of 5,000 moms) about social media and its role in helping them make buying decisions. The study found that utilization of social media was very high: 81% of the respondents said they were members of Facebook (but only 23% had Twitter accounts) and 60% reported visiting a social networking site in the previous 24 hours.

via momlogic.com

The study also found that personal recommendations were by far the most powerful drivers of purchasing behavior, a phenomenon we have noted before. In its research brief on this study, Mediapost found it “surprising” that only 24% of respondents reported using Facebook in making a purchasing decision, and that far fewer used MySpace or Twitter.

We don’t find this data surprising and we certainly don’t find it troubling. First, social shopping is relatively new, especially on social networks like Facebook and Twitter which only recently have become business-friendly. Just as overall utilization of social networks has increased dramatically over the past few years, we fully expect that utilization for exchanging information and experiences about brands and products will catch up. Especially because, as the research indicates, moms interact with brands at a very high level. Not only did 81% report visiting a marketer’s web site for product information, 36% reported becoming a fan of a marketer on Facebook (which is a little difficult to reconcile with the 24% figure cited above).

What does surprise us is how many major brands haven’t fully committed to social networks as a marketing medium. How can moms be expected to use Facebook to connect with marketers if marketers in the categories moms care about aren’t using Facebook to connect with them? So if a mom says she doesn’t use Facebook to help her decide which breakfast cereal to buy, it may indeed be that she just isn’t comfortable using social networks to crowdsource purchase decisions, but it could be that the brands she cares about haven’t given her a reason to try.

Another interesting finding from this study is how moms get and share information about products. Although personal recommendations are by a wide margin the preferred medium, 41% of respondents report consulting “mom-focused web sites” for information (presumably including the sponsor of the research) and 34% get information from shopping web sites. 54% have shared their opinions by rating or reviewing a product online and 37% have posted about a product in an online forum or blog. For a group that doesn’t obviously include large numbers of early adopters, we think this shows a reasonably high level of engagement with social shopping.

If moms are already using socially-oriented web sites – but not Facebook or Twitter – to help them make better purchasing decisions, it may be that they have figured out which sites offer relevant content and a valuable experience and aren’t limiting themselves to the big social networking brands. That suggests two things: first, that as marketers make better use of Facebook and Twitter they will find a ready audience of social shoppers. And second, that consumers are willing to use social shopping web sites that don’t have the brand strength of Facebook and Twitter, at least so long as they provide value to the consumer. As observers of social media marketing we are confident about the first observation. As developers of a new social shopping platform we are optimistic about the second.

Update: This post about the Maclaren stroller recall illustrates how active moms are on social networks, and how much influence they can have over marketers.