Yahoo (YHOO) conducted a study that shows a large number of people like to share with others about the products or services they have purchased.
They interviewed 2,261 consumers who had made major purchases in the last half year. Things like home loans, cars, trips and electronics.
According to Yahoo, around 40% of the people they designated as "brand advocates." The report defined them as "adventurous opinion leaders who are socially well-connected, express their opinions and viewpoints and continually 
discover new content online."
While there were a lot of specific differences between advocates and non-advocates, the bottom line is that advocates interacted with things online at a much higher rate than those that didn't spread things around as much.
An interesting thing I thought about when reading this was whether the purchasing was the driver behind the spreading of the word, or the options available to do it easily? I also wonder if it's also connected to bragging about their purchases, and letting others know they got them?
For marketers, I guess the major point is to get people talking about what they bought from you; no matter what the reason.
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