Canadian shoppers discover products on social media, follow creators they trust, build real enthusiasm for brands they've never tried, and share what they find. But when it comes to actually buying something, 98.7% don't do it from the post. They leave, they investigate, and they decide somewhere else on the internet in places such as reviews, retailer sites, or after a quick check with someone they know.

Earlier this year Butterly surveyed 3,522 Canadian consumers about how they move from discovering a product to buying it. One pattern showed up repeatedly: shopping has become an investigation, and that investigation doesn't only happen on social media.

Social is primarily a discovery engine

Creator and influencer content is how 38.2% of our respondents first hear about a product, ahead of retailer websites and apps (35.3%), paid social ads (27.4%), and well ahead of email (17.4%) or brand websites (13.8%). Only word of mouth (52.9%) and search (43.1%) rank higher, and neither are channels a brand can control.

Social effectively puts products in front of people who didn't know they wanted them. The problem is what happens after that.

When someone discovers a product through a creator, 56.4% immediately go looking for reviews. Another 22.4% head straight to the brand or retailer site. Only 1.3% buy without doing anything else first. The post created interest and the shopper immediately went somewhere else to help them decide.

For smaller brands running lean, this gap is where budget quietly disappears. Social looks like it's working because the engagement is real, but the purchase decisions are happening somewhere the likes don't show up.

They're checking in places you don't own

The sources shoppers trust most are the ones brands control least, which makes sense in a world where we've all been burned by an impulse buy. On social, a creator's post gives someone a reason to get curious, and what follows is that curiosity getting tested against sources that feel less managed: honest customer reviews, independent opinions, or a friend's text.

And not all creator content lands the same way. A paid influencer post reads as promotion and shoppers treat it accordingly. An unpaid advocate, someone sharing a product because they actually use it and like it, sits in a different category. It's closer to a peer recommendation than an ad, which means it carries more of the credibility a shopper is looking for when they go investigating. Advocate content does two things at once: it creates awareness and provides an early proof point, though even then more than half of shoppers keep investigating, which means advocate content opens the door and supports the proof journey but is one of the typical 2-3 sources our data says every shopper checks.

The proof layer is where most small budgets have a gap

The instinct for most small marketing teams is to put money where the attention is. Social has the attention and a low barrier to entry, so social gets the budget, but what gets underfunded is the final proof a shopper needs to validate their purchase: ratings and reviews.

59.8% of our respondents said recency is the single most important quality in a customer review; more than volume, more than verified purchase status and more than photos (although those are important too!). A product with two hundred reviews from eighteen months ago is less persuasive than one with a dozen from last month, which means review generation isn't a campaign so much as an ongoing requirement that needs to be built into how a brand operates.

89.1% of respondents have hesitated or walked away from a purchase because the reviews didn't feel credible. That's not a sentiment finding. That's lost revenue, and it's disproportionately felt by smaller brands that don't yet have the review volume to absorb the skepticism.

Fund the spark and fuel the fire

The point isn't to spend less on social. It's that social without credible proof downstream generates interest and then gives it away. A shopper gets curious, finds thin or dated reviews, and ends up buying from someone else.

Paid creator content opens the door and unpaid advocates open it while leaving something behind, because their content already reads like the honest peer experience shoppers are hunting for when they go looking for reviews. Brands building on genuine advocacy compress the gap between discovery and decision.

When a campaign goes out, the proof needs to already be there: current reviews, real customer photos, visible brand engagement on the platforms where people actually land. Discovery and proof aren't two separate workstreams. They are both part of the same journey and for small teams making tight budget decisions, treating them that way is a smart investment.

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The Proof-First Purchase Path is Butterly's Q1 2026 survey of 3,522 Canadian consumers. Full results are available here.