I’m currently in London, but I do want to mention that we have released a new white paper, the first topic in a 3 part series. Below is taken from the mail we sent out earlier today. I will share more thoughts on this soon. In the meantime, do check it out.

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Following the launch of the first Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) analytics dashboard in China- IWOM master on June1, 2009, CIC is pleased to announce the release of our latest IWOM White Paper: “Making Sense of IWOM”: The Role of Internet Word of Mouth in Purchase Decisions. The white paper can be downloaded here.

The white paper is based on comprehensive qualitative and quantitative offline research conducted by CIC in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu and reveals how netizens’ recommendations and opinions play a very important role in affecting the consumer purchase decision making process.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Do consumers pay attention to IWOM? – 81.2% of netizens search IWOM when making purchase decisions. IWOM is most influential within the mobile phone, consumer electronics, cosmetics and baby care categories with at least 50% of respondents seeking out IWOM when buying.

• Why do consumers pay attention to IWOM? – primary motivation is to reduce the purchase decision risk (71.5% of all respondents)

• How does IWOM influences consumers’ attitude toward brands? – Positive IWOM has a 50% chance to convert a bad impression to a good one.

• How does IWOM affect purchase decisions? – Reviewing the purchase decision process, we found that IWOM has a remarkable affect on “awareness” and final “purchase decision” with 56.3% of respondents getting to know the brand through IWOM and 58.7% of respondents making their purchase decisions based on IWOM.

For more information, please click here for a free download or click here to check full reports on slideshare. You can also visit iwommaster.com (Back Story Page) or our blog seeisee.com (IWOM Research Column) to find our previous White Papers and related Blog articles, for better understanding Chinese Internet communities and the fast development in China. You’ll also find our find our newly launched dashboard there. More on this later as well…