Customers who engage with companies on social media spend 20% to 40% more with them
Outdated Confidence: medium
Source found and quoted correctly, but old enough that the market has changed.
- Commonly cited as
- "Social customers spend 20–40% more"
- True origin
- Bain & Company — Putting Social Media to Work (Sept. 2011)
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- 2011
- Data as of
- Survey of 3,000+ consumers, 2011
- Last checked
- What the source says
Our recent survey of more than 3,000 consumers helped to identify what makes social media effective. We found that customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20% to 40% more money with those companies th
- Method & sample
- Bain survey of 3,000+ consumers in 2011; correlation, not a test of whether social engagement causes higher spending.
- Drift between quote and source
- Age: 2011 data from the early social era
- Causality: heavy spenders are more likely to follow brands, not necessarily the reverse
- Interest
- Bain sells consulting services.
Safe rephrasing
A 2011 Bain survey of 3,000+ consumers found that people who engaged with companies on social media spent 20–40% more with them; it is old, correlational data.
Sources we opened
Machine-readable: /api/claims/social-media-customers-spend-20-40-percent-more-bain.json · Last checked 2026-10-16