32% of online shoppers have made a purchase based on what they've seen on Pinterest or similar sites

"Pinterest isn’t just one of the fastest-growing social networks around. It is also driving shoppers to make purchases.
32% of online shoppers have made a purchase based on what they’ve seen on Pinterest and other image-sharing sites, according to a new survey from Bizrate Insights.  These sites focus primarily on enabling consumers to select images and other content from the web, rather than posting original content as shoppers often do on sites like Facebook or Twitter. While Pinterest is the dominant image-sharing site, with 18.2 million unique visitors in March, according to web traffic measurement firm Compete.com, other sites in the category include Polyvore (which had 2.2 million unique visitors in March) and Juxtapost (13,340 unique visitors in March).
The report also found 37% of consumers have seen on image-sharing sites items they want to buy but have not. Bizrate’s report is based on a survey of 3,741 online shoppers conducted in late March. The report gave no similar data for Facebook or other social networks."

Source:  Internet Retailer, 25th April 2012

Note - No methodology is given, but I'm assuming that the research was carried out in the US