Word of text

continuing yesterday's essay on community selling and opinion sharing, word of mouth has taken a virtual turn in the road to word of hypertexting. I would like to bring up the topic on information related to a purchase or product and how a "visual review" would serve much better in some cases than a descriptive one. I would like to take you on a tour of one of my favorite sites when it comes to this aspect of community reviews - think geek.

back to buying - while I love perusing online, one challenge I face is to visualize a product in context - how will that Christmas ornament look on my table? How does t-shirt look on someone? representation of the product in a life like setting actually helps close a decision. In this regard, Amazon has customer pictures, some online retailers include professional pictures, but I would much rather have shared customer photos as not all of us are armed with a vivid imagination.

The best community pictures I have seen are at http://www.thinkgeek.com I have seen more customer shots on this site than any other, perhaps geeks always have a camera ready, or are not shy how they appear in public :-), but I would give a service fee to more realistic pictures of how shoes look or how everyday things actually appear in a setting. Am a little challenged measurementally (not sure that's a word) but when a product on a Christmas ornament description reads 3' x 4' x 5' I just do not know how that would look on my table.

 

and the context shot....

....................

Here is an example of virtual fitting before a full length screen - http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/6f63/action/ - a surprisingly durable and well toned T-Shirt.

multi-channel on the rise: research and/or buy

 

Here is an interesting video posted on the google retail advertising blog. Neilsen concluded that Multi-channel/cross-channel spend is higher on average than customers who frequent one channel only, or example - stores.

Here's the google retail blog post - http://googleretail.blogspot.com/2008/12/pinpointing-value-of-multi-channel.html

There is a lot of consonance with analyst findings to substantiate the thoughts expressed in this interview. The advantage of course is that with the information sharing afforded by the web and comparison shopping sites, customer have better information related to price, choice and product reviews which makes them smarter shoppers. By researching online, customers get reviews which are a result of collaborative sharing: advice, warnings, positive recommendations and a purchase which is much more satisfying!

While this information may seem to overburden the customer, the organization of this intelligence is getting better, please see the previous post. All in all the net is effectively becoming the all knowing and impartial salesperson. This part of the customer purchase process is becoming better and the day of the broadcast ad while still maintaining those tenants of Con-B and retention, we may not need to retain brand as the overriding contributor to a purchase decision. Signing that check or sliding that credit card is only the lag action in the buying process, research into the product is the major bulk of the purchasing process.

here's an interview with AIS Media, Founder which aired on Fox business - for every $1 spent online, $6 is influenced for store purchases. This means that basic con-b and branding marketing strategies are also getting impacted here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lcGZcmyW3g

And retailers remember - a happy customer, after independent research is more likely to come back.

For those who find this interesting, you may also want to check out multi-channel reports by leading analyst firms like Forrester, AMR, Gartner etc.

Changes to purchasing patterns

A great article on the google retail blog with some thought provoking numbers, either  the times or our culture has changes the buying process, on which much con-b and marketing strategies are defined - http://googleretail.blogspot.com/2008/12/cyber-monday-is-new-black.html

Cyber Monday

According to The Gourmet Retailer, online sales are up 10% compared to last year see:  http://www.gourmetretailer.com/gourmetretailer/index.jsp.

According to the article, eBay was first followed by Amazon and Walmart in that order. In order to get a real feel for the health of sales, there are a couple of things we need to keep an eye out for; one is sales on Monday 15th, traditionally the peak day for online shopping and the rate of returns from the previous online purchases, tracking these into mid February. Often these are higher due to the non physical nature of the buying process, this is especially true for unplanned purchases of goods and/or services.

Searching for "the BBD"

In light of the buyer motivation being bigger, better deals, it is perhaps a good idea to research shopping comparison sites like uBid, BizRate or google shopping, I found a nice comparison chart on TopTenREVIEWS which has done a comparison of fairly well known sites. using a combination of these one can find a lower price or better shipping options. I have found that one or more sites tend to be better at certain categories.

The Social Media - helping the purchase process

In the past when one wanted to get an idea of the experience of someone who had already purchased a product, there were dedicated sites like epinions, consumerreports.org which gave a review of the product. Now, there are a multitude of options for example people comment on the product site itself on their experience with the product. I have found this particularly helpful on Amazon, where consumers offer their opinions of the product:

 

 

This is a great way of quickly finding out what other customers thought of the product, but I feel that when I am looking for a move review it should not be that the dvd was not shipped or that the format did not work, it should be about the movie itself. Hence I feel when a comment is added, one should choose a category and comments filtered by such categories definitely help the decision making process.

Now! -- while somewhat interactive in nature, this does not help one find substitutes, well actually you can navigate to the category and find out more options for water purifiers or golf bags. However a side by side comparison which is offered by a number of other vendors and is now offered as part of the amazon Amapedia....

 

 

Hopefully all this becomes part of one rich tapestry of shopping tools, these are as welcome as a pot of tea when we are picking for deals in these lean times. What I would also like to see is a more social editing review board much like Wikipedia but for products that can be hosted by a retailer or an independent org, much like yelp but with an editing and content management process like Wiki, with a edited synopsis and for the more adventurous or pricey items the ability to pursue all the comments by date, rank or category.

Lastly, maybe alerts to my email or blackberry on price reductions on items that are in my cart or wishlist!

 

Please let me know what you think of this article and if there are any more shopping tips for us who are mousing our way to better deals.

multi-channel on the rise: research and/or buy

Here is an interesting video on youtube posted on the google retail advertising blog multi-channel. Neilsen concluded that Multi-channel/cross-channel spend on an average is higher than customer why purchase exclusively from stores.

Here's the google retail blog post - http://googleretail.blogspot.com/2008/12/pinpointing-value-of-multi-channel.html

There is a lot of consonance with analyst findings to substantiate the thoughts expressed in this interview. The advantage of course is that with the information sharing afforded by the web and comparison shopping sites, customer have better information related to price, choice and product reviews which makes them smarter shoppers. By researching online, customers get reviews which are a result of collaborative sharing: advice, warnings, positive recommendations and a purchase which is much more satisfying!

While this information may seem to overburden the customer, the organization of this intelligence is getting better, please see the previous post. All in all the net is effectively becoming the all knowing and impartial salesperson. This part of the customer purchase process is becoming better and the day of the broadcast ad while still maintaining those tenants of Con-B and retention, we may not need to retain brand as the overriding contributor to a purchase decision. Signing that check or sliding that credit card is only the lag action in the buying process, research into the product is the major bulk of the purchasing process.

here's an interview with AIS Media, Founder which aired on Fox business - for every $1 spent online, $6 is influenced for store purchases. This means that basic con-b and branding marketing strategies are also getting impacted here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lcGZcmyW3g

And retailers remember - a happy customer, after independent research is more likely to come back.

For those who find this interesting, you may also want to check out multi-channel reports by leading analyst firms like Forrester, AMR, Gartner etc.