Are consumers smarter than ever? Depends on your definition.
If you think they make wiser choices because they’ve been trained by the marketplace and they simply know better, well, I’m not too sure. It hardly explains why anybody at all buys a Chevy, and why there are twice as many search engine inquiries for “Hummer” than “Prius.”
But today’s consumer certainly has far greater access to information than ever before. And far greater access to a larger selection of goods than ever before. Plus, at the top of the consumer pyramid is the wired consumer, who seemingly has access to just about everything. These consumers are using access to information to assist in making a vast array of decisions, from which kitchen contractor to hire, to what model automobile to purchase, to where to get pizza delivery.
By far the biggest change is the advent of user-generated content, and its use as critical decision-making data by consumers. Recommendations, from Amazon to Zagat, have an increasing amount of influence over purchase decisions. The influence of opinions, coming from everywhere in the blogosphere, is also having an impact.
Inasmuch as all this information has the potential to allow consumers to make better choices, there will always be the issue of sorting the credible from the uninformed, and the incorrect. Just because someone posts on a blog that Kanine Krunchies are great doesn’t make it so. (You do remember 101 Dalmatians, don’t you?)
Even NBC’s Brian Williams understands the online credibility issue. Recently, while conceding the new order, he remarked in an NYU Journalism class, “All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years."
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