A Retail Dilemma: Consumers Believe In Pictures As Digital Trust Declines

“Clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right” – is a catchy line from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” (don’t judge), but it also sums up how consumers feel today when looking for product information online. The drumbeat of distrust is rising for online retail. It’s an unfortunate by-product of news media trends, social media failures and changing technology. Whereas shoppers have relied heavily on product reviews, they now lean on something new: pictures. A majority of shoppers think visual information is more important than text when it comes to products, according to a new study from the Intent Lab, a partnership between digital marketing agency Performics and the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing. Increasingly, consumers are using visual search to find what they want. Read more at Forbes.