There’s Power in All Those User Reviews
By MATT RICHTEL, NYT
You are no longer the sucker you used to be.
So suggests continuing research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business into the challenges marketers face in reaching consumers in the digital age. As you might suspect, the research shows that a wealth of online product information and user reviews is causing a fundamental shift in how consumers make decisions.
As consumers rely more on one another, the power of marketers is being undermined, said Itamar Simonson, a Stanford marketing professor and the lead researcher.
In the study, participants were asked which of three Canon cameras they’d like to buy. Before deciding, they were allowed to spend a few minutes reading user reviews and other information about these and other cameras on Amazon.com.
To get the full impact of the findings, you first have to know the conclusions of a similar experiment decades ago by Dr. Simonson, then at Duke. In it, some subjects chose among three Minolta cameras: an inexpensive one, a midprice one and an expensive one. Another group was given a choice of just two of the Minoltas: the midprice one and the less expensive one.
(More here.)
You are no longer the sucker you used to be.
So suggests continuing research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business into the challenges marketers face in reaching consumers in the digital age. As you might suspect, the research shows that a wealth of online product information and user reviews is causing a fundamental shift in how consumers make decisions.
As consumers rely more on one another, the power of marketers is being undermined, said Itamar Simonson, a Stanford marketing professor and the lead researcher.
In the study, participants were asked which of three Canon cameras they’d like to buy. Before deciding, they were allowed to spend a few minutes reading user reviews and other information about these and other cameras on Amazon.com.
To get the full impact of the findings, you first have to know the conclusions of a similar experiment decades ago by Dr. Simonson, then at Duke. In it, some subjects chose among three Minolta cameras: an inexpensive one, a midprice one and an expensive one. Another group was given a choice of just two of the Minoltas: the midprice one and the less expensive one.
(More here.)
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