Pinoys = Gullible consumers

Have you noticed the recent sprouting of commercials that says they heal you or make you thin and yet, if you squint at the bottom part of the clip showed, it says "no therapeutic claim"? Ano yun? Parang bibili ako ng pagkain na di naman ako mabubusog? Hanlabo!

And then comes this newsclip from Manila Times:

Filipinos world’s biggest suckers for print, TV ads

FILIPINOS, along with Brazilians, are the world’s most gullible consumers when it comes to commercial advertising, with “word-of-mouth” as the most powerful selling tool, according to a Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey.

In its Trust in Advertising report, Nielsen found that at 67 percent, Filipinos and Brazilians were the most trusting overall in all forms of advertising.

Trust was lowest among Danes at 28 percent; Italians, 32 percent; Lithuanians, 34 percent; and Germans, 35 percent.

The survey is conducted twice a year to gauge consumer attitudes and opinions on a variety of topics and current affairs. It surveyed 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets from Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East.

“Traditional media fare reasonably well, but online and mobile-phone ads aren’t to be trusted,” Nielsen said.

While new platforms like the Internet are beginning to catch up with older media in terms of ad revenues, traditional advertising channels continue to retain the public’s trust, the survey said.

It said that advertising in newspapers rank second worldwide among all media categories at 63 percent overall, while television, magazines and radio each ranked above 50 percent.

“Although consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78 percent of the study’s respondents, Nielsen research found significant national and regional differences regarding this and other mediums,” the research firm said.

It noted that word-of-mouth, for example, generates considerable levels of trust across much of the Asia Pacific.

“The advertising industry has to do a better job at communicating the value it brings to consumers,” said Jonathan Carson of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a service of the Nielsen Company.

“In developing markets, advertising is seen more as a conveyor of useful information. In more developed markets, people don’t need it to play that role. They have too much information already,” he said.

(Actually, kahit masdan mo lang sa mga tabloid na Bulgar atbp, their frontpages just entices a reader to buy them. My grandpa buys their newspaper for the sake of the crosswordpuzzles, but if you scrutinize their articles, at first they say "Artista, nabuntis" and yet when you fully read the article, it only says that the artista is thinking of getting pregnant. Amfuta, anlabo naman!?)