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September 25, 2003
Empowering the vendor!
Some late night pondering leads to this:
The Internet has empowered the consumer to a level never before known. With the click of the mouse we can visit product specific forums, written by the consumers for the consumers. These product forums, where every aspect of the product is discussed to a level where even the product manager would probably need to research the answers, have become the hunting ground for those consumers about to make a purchase.
Armed with all the information garnered from the forums, the consumers approach the vendor and fire all the missiles they've gathered: "I want a discount - your product costs 30 Euros less in Outer Mongolia", "Does the product have the newest firmware xx version", "I want the version that doesn't have the bug in the ultra wash program" and so on and so on.
The Internet is inverting the relationship between customer and vendor. The consumer is becoming fully informed about the vendor and the product in question. Good for us - right?
Perhaps, but then again - perhaps not (in the long run).
Isn't the Internet enabling the consumers to form monopolies, buying monopolies? And aren't monopolies bad in the long run? Just as vendor monopolies are considered bad for a free market, so - probably - are buying monopolies. Just the other way around.
Will we get to a point where the vendors need empowering? Look at the way the music and film vendors failed to grasp what was happening to the "value" of their products and the way the Internet changed the method of distribution. And they still don't get it.
In the same way vendors of products such as my new Touran still probably don't realize that I can get better product information from the independent Touran forum than from the VW homepage. Before and after I buy. Why don't VW employees hang out there like bees near a honey pot?
In the long run we will need vendors that are just as Internet savvy as their consumers. And we as the empowered consumers need to help them to "get it".
Posted by Matthew at September 25, 2003 12:19 AM