Social Soup says friends beat paid ads six to one for new grocery buys

What 850 shoppers said

Social Soup asked 850 Australian grocery buyers what drove their most recent product trial, and the answer most FMCG suppliers are not optimising for came out on top. 27% named another person as the biggest influence on their latest trial. 4% credited paid advertising across TV, social, digital and outdoor combined.^[1] Six to one, across every format a media buyer can book.

Social Soup founder and CEO Sharyn Smith and Four Pillars Gin co-founder Matt Jones presented the findings at a Research Breakfast in Sydney on 5 November 2026.

How trial actually travels

79% of main grocery buyers tried a new food, drink or household product in the past three months. 51% bought on the spot and 83% bought within a week.^[1] Get the product in front of the right person and conversion is fast.

What happens after that first purchase is where the maths gets interesting. 78% of triers tell others, reaching an average of 15.1 people. 68% of those conversations happen in person and only 6% on social media.^[1] The advocacy chain runs mostly through kitchens and conversations, not feeds. Social Soup put the downstream effect at 62% of people who hear about a product from someone else going on to buy it.^[5]

Creator content follows a generational line. Shoppers aged 18 to 34 are almost four times as likely as those over 55 to name a creator as their biggest influence.^[5] Over-45s skew toward in-store: 45% of that group rely more on what they see in store.^[5] One in eight shoppers in household, personal care and health categories said they used an AI tool to inform a purchase decision, against one in 30 across all categories.^[1]

What this means for Australian grocery suppliers

Nielsen's data, cited by Social Soup, puts fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) launch failure at 76% in the first year.^[1] On that measure three in four new products fail in their first year. For a supplier sitting down to plan 2027, the question is whether launch dollars are going to the channel that actually moves the first unit.

Social Soup has made a similar argument before. Its Community Shift research found 91% of Australians had bought something on a community recommendation, and 43% said they belonged to more communities than they did two years earlier.^[3] The November survey sharpens that general finding into category-level numbers with a named conversion rate.

Sharyn Smith said the two biggest competitive advantages in the future will be creativity and community.^[3] For Coles and Woolworths suppliers under margin pressure from both chains, that is a budget reallocation argument backed by 850 grocery buyers and a six-to-one multiplier they can put in front of a CFO.

Social Soup's earlier work on product sampling found sampling was named the single best way to discover a new product by 58% of respondents, well ahead of friend recommendations at 9%.^[4] Pair that with the 78% of triers who go on to tell an average of 15 people, and the arithmetic for designing trial to travel becomes fairly plain.