In our Social Media Principles course, we are reading Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. The book has me taking a deeper look into how I use the internet. The groundswell is a spontaneous movement of people using online
tools to connect, take charge of their own experience and get what they need
from each other. I do this all the time. The majority of the furniture and appliances I purchased for my dorm room I got off Craigslist.com.Take my mini fridge for example. I needed one for my dorm room for me and my roommate. I didn't want to spend $150 on a brand new one that was in the stores, so I did a little research. I looked up reviews, suggestions from college graduates and I even read a few blogs about eating/storing food in college to help me make my decision. Did I need one with a freezer? Will it leak in my room? How do I transport it? Should I buy a new one? Or is a used one okay? I had so many questions. Craigslist.com had a multitude of options. After reading all those reviews and figuring out what I should do, I search through Craigslist.com for a mini fridge in the style and brand I wanted. I can find the product I like, contact the seller and then evaluate the product before I buy it. It was cheaper and easier to negotiate a price with a person rather than a company. The more I read The Groundswell the more I realized how often I buy products from various sellers rather than the manufacturer. The book gives several examples on how businesses can use the groundswell, but the more I think about it, the more it just seems like it comes down to giving customers a better customer service experience. I want to buy a product that has great reviews, that I can find cheap and that will be worth my money. If a company can find a way to give me all three of those, I wouldn't feel the need to spend hours on my computer doing research on products I need. Give me links to reviews, give me a good price and get rid of my buyers remorse and I will love you forever. Amazon.com and eBay.com hopped on the bandwagon early. They facilitate the sale of products between consumers and give reviews and ratings of the products before you buy. Either they saw this trend coming or they just got extremely lucky. I don't just want to be another dollar to a company. I want to know that my business is important to the company and they are listening to me. So here's my question, are companies picking up on this yet? The Groundswell was written back in 2008 and has a plethora of tips, tricks and tales to help out businesses looking to innovate, but I don't really notice any change. Maybe I don't see it or I might just not know it's happening, but either way the groundswell is the new way to do business that can help get the consumers back to their stores. Tuesday, September 03, 2013
The Groundswell
In our Social Media Principles course, we are reading Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. The book has me taking a deeper look into how I use the internet. The groundswell is a spontaneous movement of people using online
tools to connect, take charge of their own experience and get what they need
from each other. I do this all the time. The majority of the furniture and appliances I purchased for my dorm room I got off Craigslist.com.Take my mini fridge for example. I needed one for my dorm room for me and my roommate. I didn't want to spend $150 on a brand new one that was in the stores, so I did a little research. I looked up reviews, suggestions from college graduates and I even read a few blogs about eating/storing food in college to help me make my decision. Did I need one with a freezer? Will it leak in my room? How do I transport it? Should I buy a new one? Or is a used one okay? I had so many questions. Craigslist.com had a multitude of options. After reading all those reviews and figuring out what I should do, I search through Craigslist.com for a mini fridge in the style and brand I wanted. I can find the product I like, contact the seller and then evaluate the product before I buy it. It was cheaper and easier to negotiate a price with a person rather than a company. The more I read The Groundswell the more I realized how often I buy products from various sellers rather than the manufacturer. The book gives several examples on how businesses can use the groundswell, but the more I think about it, the more it just seems like it comes down to giving customers a better customer service experience. I want to buy a product that has great reviews, that I can find cheap and that will be worth my money. If a company can find a way to give me all three of those, I wouldn't feel the need to spend hours on my computer doing research on products I need. Give me links to reviews, give me a good price and get rid of my buyers remorse and I will love you forever. Amazon.com and eBay.com hopped on the bandwagon early. They facilitate the sale of products between consumers and give reviews and ratings of the products before you buy. Either they saw this trend coming or they just got extremely lucky. I don't just want to be another dollar to a company. I want to know that my business is important to the company and they are listening to me. So here's my question, are companies picking up on this yet? The Groundswell was written back in 2008 and has a plethora of tips, tricks and tales to help out businesses looking to innovate, but I don't really notice any change. Maybe I don't see it or I might just not know it's happening, but either way the groundswell is the new way to do business that can help get the consumers back to their stores.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree that the things that Groundswell laid out haven't really been followed by many companies. Amazon and Ebay are good examples of companies that have followed the advice there, but otherwise I haven't seen that much of a difference. Quite possibly, this is because large companies think their customers will come to them no matter what, but if there do emerge companies that use Groundswell's advice more effectively, they might be in for a rude awakening.
ReplyDelete