BIGresearch ran a study recently that profiled the influencing factors for purchasing decisions by satellite radio listeners. Oddly enough, and I know this is going to shock everyone, but one of the things they learned is that the lack of commercial content on satellite radio music channels has less of an impact on our purchase decisions. Yeah, wait.. what?

Apparently the lack of commercials means there's less exposure to advertisers, which means that satellite radio has less of an influence on purchase decisions. This is ground breaking stuff people.

So they paired off XM vs SIRIUS listeners in purchasing influences, and here's the results:

Word of Mouth:
Sirius: 34.4%
XM: 36.9%

TV/Broadcast:
Sirius: 28.3%
XM: 29.6%

Terrestrial Radio:
Sirius: 16.6%
XM: 17.3%

Satellite Radio:
Sirius: 9.1%
XM: 8.1%

These are all for car/truck purchases mind you, with home improvement purchases showing similar numbers. Over the next six months, 17% of Sirius listeners and 16.2% of XM listeners plan on making a home improvement purchase, and 13.1% of Sirius listeners and 10.9% of XM listeners will purchase a new car or truck.

And since we're all such early adopters, satellite radio listener's planned purchases of big ticket items exceed the overall market place and generally exceed terrestrial radio. So while hearing a commercial on terrestrial is more influencial than satellite, the satellite radio listener is still more likely to act on it.

[FMQB]