Trustpilot's new study shows how consumer needs are changing
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 4:46 am
A new study conducted by Tristpilot shows how consumer habits have changed during this pandemic. The study explored all aspects of consumers' daily lives, highlighting peaks just before a purchase.
For Italian users, the pre-purchase phase has been recognized as an additional form of personal protection. This is evidenced by the data relating to the frequency of review consultation: over a third of the sample reads them more frequently during this period than pre-Covid. This is the highest figure compared to the rest of Europe.
This growing need for information can be explained, in part, by the fear of online scams that have been plaguing people in recent months: nearly half of those interviewed, in fact, said they were more concerned about these types of attacks since the emergency began.
Furthermore, the need for adequate information also shop stems from a greater distrust of businesses, which had been evident even before the emergency began. Indeed, at the end of 2019, Trustpilot and YouGov conducted a survey on this issue, finding that a large portion of respondents had absolutely no trust in what a company communicated directly about itself. Today, in the midst of the emergency, the data becomes even more negative , as the level of trust has remained unchanged for just over half of respondents, but has further decreased for nearly a quarter of the sample.
For better or worse, therefore, there is greater interest in the performance of companies, and one of the new parameters that determines whether or not to trust a company is understanding how it is managing the emergency : evaluating this parameter is important or very important for the majority of Italian interviewees.
"Our survey highlighted how this emergency period has further weakened online trust in companies, and how the proliferation of online fraud has not helped, " commented Claudio Ciccarelli, Country Manager at Trustpilot . " The positive side is that there are still tools that can support consumers in their decision-making processes, and reviews are one of them. Trustpilot is working harder than ever to educate all consumers about the need to be extra careful when writing or reading an online review. Our goal is for Trustpilot and all open review platforms to remain places where consumers can trust the information they read and be helped in their decisions."
For Italian users, the pre-purchase phase has been recognized as an additional form of personal protection. This is evidenced by the data relating to the frequency of review consultation: over a third of the sample reads them more frequently during this period than pre-Covid. This is the highest figure compared to the rest of Europe.
This growing need for information can be explained, in part, by the fear of online scams that have been plaguing people in recent months: nearly half of those interviewed, in fact, said they were more concerned about these types of attacks since the emergency began.
Furthermore, the need for adequate information also shop stems from a greater distrust of businesses, which had been evident even before the emergency began. Indeed, at the end of 2019, Trustpilot and YouGov conducted a survey on this issue, finding that a large portion of respondents had absolutely no trust in what a company communicated directly about itself. Today, in the midst of the emergency, the data becomes even more negative , as the level of trust has remained unchanged for just over half of respondents, but has further decreased for nearly a quarter of the sample.
For better or worse, therefore, there is greater interest in the performance of companies, and one of the new parameters that determines whether or not to trust a company is understanding how it is managing the emergency : evaluating this parameter is important or very important for the majority of Italian interviewees.
"Our survey highlighted how this emergency period has further weakened online trust in companies, and how the proliferation of online fraud has not helped, " commented Claudio Ciccarelli, Country Manager at Trustpilot . " The positive side is that there are still tools that can support consumers in their decision-making processes, and reviews are one of them. Trustpilot is working harder than ever to educate all consumers about the need to be extra careful when writing or reading an online review. Our goal is for Trustpilot and all open review platforms to remain places where consumers can trust the information they read and be helped in their decisions."