Food Content is a Hit (and Can Drive Sales), Says eMarketer Report

An eMarketer report released this week outlines how user-generated content is a growing source of food inspiration online, which you probably already know from your Instagram feed, and offers some interesting stats.

• The best path to a consumer is through their friends. The leading influencer of users’ decisions to buy a new food or beverage is that a “close friend recommends it online.” The second leading source is that a “friend other than a close friend” recommends it.
• Allrecipes.com found that 65% of females that regularly used recipe sites bought branded ingredients called for in the recipes at least sometimes. Twenty-one percent said they “usually” do.
• In May 2012, Compete found that food was the leading topic category for interactions on Pinterest; a quarter of users bought a product after discovering it on Pinterest.

Similarly, and in keeping up with the trend, a number of startups are featuring images of food in their visual design. One example is PunchFork; it is a recipe site that primarily features images on the home page (for comparison, see Allrecipes or Epicurious). Another is appetude, which focuses on dish and restaurant discovery. It prominently features photos of the dishes themselves rather than reviews (for comparison, see Yelp). Just looking at them is enough to make you hungry.