Kitchener, ON (October 6, 2026) — Offer a Canadian shopper two similar products: the first, a brand they know and trust with average recent reviews, and the second, a brand they have never tried with excellent recent reviews. Given the option, nearly half will pick the brand they have never tried.

That result comes from Butterly's Everyday Buying Trust survey of 2,220 Canadians, released today. 48.7% chose the unfamiliar brand, 20% stayed with the one they knew, and 31.3% wanted more information before deciding, leaving the door open for quality reviews to influence customer behaviour.

1. Loyalty follows experience

We asked people about a brand they had bought before, whose product now had mixed recent reviews, and 38.7% said they would look for more information before just buying the brand they know. Among those ready to decide, their own experience with the brand carried the most weight in their decision making (30.0%), followed by recent reviews (20.0%). Surprisingly, the brand's overall reputation came last at 9.5%.

That ordering shows that older, established brands would benefit from continuing to feed their feedback loops and not relying only on an established reputation to win today's shoppers. Happy customers are a brand's strongest defence, however, they may need to be prompted to share their experience. For leading brands, this means that in competitive categories where shoppers know the brand leader by name but have never used the product, the leader has less protection than brand awareness numbers may suggest.

Today's economic climate is top of mind for most. When asked how financial pressure has changed their buying over the past year, respondents most often noted they now wait for sales (36.9%), buy fewer non-essentials (36.3%) and compare prices across more retailers (32.8%). In that environment, shoppers will pay a premium for a name they trust, but only a modest one. Of respondents who named a figure, nearly nine in ten would pay a trusted brand no more than 10% extra, and 12.5% of all respondents would pay nothing extra, choosing instead only on price. The largest group, 42.7%, said it depends on the product.

Once shoppers find themselves comparing options, reviews carry real weight. 28.4% said they would switch from a trusted brand to a cheaper option if it had strong reviews, and 25.3% said discovering a cheaper alternative with strong reviews would make them abandon a purchase they were otherwise ready to make.

That said, being unfamiliar comes at a cost, with 30.4% saying never having heard of a brand makes them spend more time researching. This indicates that while extra scrutiny is going to happen for challenger brands with lower awareness, the purchase outcome depends on what the shopper finds when they look.

2. Shoppers trust real people

Most of us have a friend whose recommendation we'd take over any ad, and the data shows that instinct holds up. When sources give conflicting information about a product, 69.3% side with someone they know personally, followed by recent reviews from verified customers at 57.4%. Information from the brand itself sits at only 15.3%, and creators and influencers are hitting a low at 9.4%. Outside a shopper's own circle, a recent buyer writing about their experience is the most believed source we asked about.

That trust comes with scrutiny. Shoppers are reading closely for signs that something is off, and the top red flag is many reviews using very similar wording (55.9%), followed by almost every review being five stars (35.9%) and reviews that sound overly polished or promotional (34.7%). Suspected AI writing came fourth at 25.8%. Each of those signals suggests to a shopper that there may be no real person behind the words.

Copy-pasted or fake praise is as old as customer testimonials, and generative AI tools are making it cheaper and faster to produce today. This increases the value of reviews provided by people who actually used the product, and the cost of getting it wrong is real, with 27.6% of respondents saying that reviews that seem fake or manipulated would make them walk away from a purchase they were ready to make.

And, contrary to many brand managers' belief that all the reviews must be stellar, when faced with a negative review among mostly positive ones, shoppers check how recent and detailed it is (27.6%), whether other reviewers mention the same problem (27.3%) and whether the complaint concerns the product or something like shipping (25.5%). Only 2.8% said a single credible negative review would stop them; however, 25.3% said recent negative reviews would make them abandon the purchase.

For a newer brand, this is the most practical part of the study as it demonstrates a need for a steady flow of recent reviews from people who used the product, delivered in their own words and with enough variety and candour to be considered real. Something that a page of near-identical, seemingly scripted five-star praise will not deliver.

3. Research is growing, and AI is adding to it

For brand managers, the obvious next question is how AI tools fit into the product research process. Six in ten respondents (60%) selected at least one way they have used AI when researching products. 46.8% have discovered a product through an AI tool. Overall, 49.6% say AI now complements or has replaced at least some of their previous product research, including 8.4% who say it has replaced most of what they did before.

Comparing products, features or prices was the most commonly reported use of AI, selected by 37.4% of respondents. It's easy to picture a shopper asking an AI tool to line up three moisturizers by ingredients and price, then heading to the reviews to find out how each one actually performed.

Our question on AI review summaries points in the same direction. When asked how they would use an AI summary of hundreds of real customer reviews, 44.4% said they would use it as a starting point but continue researching or check original reviews. Another 21.4% would prefer to read customer reviews themselves.

What this means for marketers is that an AI summary is only as good as the reviews it draws from, and shoppers are still going back to those original reviews before they buy. Thin, outdated or repetitive reviews don't improve when a machine summarizes them, so whichever tool a shopper starts with, a current and complete review base is still doing the work.

Where reviews stop

As much as we love a great review, even the strongest reviews can't save a sale that falls apart at checkout. Most of us know the moment: the cart is full, the decision is made, and then a shipping fee appears on the final screen. 80.8% of respondents named unexpected shipping costs or fees as something that would make them abandon a purchase they were ready to make, which is more than double any other factor. A difficult or restrictive return policy came second at 36.6%, and it shows up earlier in the journey too, with 22.2% saying difficult returns make them research longer before buying.

For challenger brands, the stakes are higher because the shopper is already taking a chance by selecting a brand they've never tried. Layer on a surprise fee or a hard return policy and that chance immediately gets more expensive, and good reviews won't close the gap. This tells us that the people setting shipping and return policies belong in the same conversations as the team building the brand's review strategy.

In their own words

Some of the most telling answers came when we offered no options at all. We asked people to describe a time when research, reviews or advice changed what they planned to buy. Of the 1,244 people who answered, 39.5% brought up reviews on their own, more than five times as often as anything else.

Two answers provided by respondents about stand mixers showed how reviews can cut both ways. One shopper was set on a big-name mixer until research changed their mind: "We were looking at a big brand mixer, after doing a bunch of looking and reading we passed on it and went for a lesser known brand that had consistent reviews." Another started with the budget option and ended up paying for the name: "Originally looking at a cheaper option stand mixer but went with the brand name because of positive reviews."

Same appliance, opposite outcomes, and in both cases reviews made the call. For established brands, it's a reminder that strong reviews protect market share as readily as they help a challenger win it. For challengers, it's evidence that a lesser-known name can take the sale when its reviews give shoppers the confidence to try something new.

Why this matters to us

We have an obvious stake in these findings. When Butterly was founded as ChickAdvisor in 2006, it was built on a simple belief that a person's honest account of a product they had actually used is worth more than anything a brand can say about it. Twenty years later, our community of Canadians still tries products and provides feedback about them in their own words, and this survey gives us a clearer picture of what keeps that kind of proof credible for shoppers. It needs to be recent, come from people who used the product, sound like the different people who wrote it, and leave room for honest criticism. Those are the standards we hold our own work to, and they're a useful measure for any brand, whatever its size.

About the survey

Butterly fielded Everyday Buying Trust to its volunteer advocate community between August 25 and September 8, 2026, collecting 2,220 completed responses. Every respondent answered every closed-ended question, giving a consistent base of 2,220 across the findings above. The survey was conducted in English.

Download the full report.