The democratisation of the Consumer Market

A couple of years ago I was asked to provide feedback on a friend’s new website he had built to promote his band. Being a person who likes to consider himself a good friend I told him I would be more than happy to. After a swift cup of coffee I rolled up my sleeves and hit the internet. When I landed on his site my enthusiasm was immediately sucked out of me. For some reason it just felt completely wrong. At the time I couldn’t really put my finger on what was wrong with it. I quickly got bored and reviewing the site had turned from a bit of fun into a laborious task.

So what was wrong, why did I have such negative feelings to the site?

That’s a good question. It had all the things you would expect from a music site:

1.    gig information
2.    track streaming
3.    merchandise store
4.    Press page
5.    Discography
6.    etc

I went back to my friend and, because I couldn’t quite figure out why I had the reaction, I just gave him some generic feedback on usability and design but I knew that wasn’t the main issue.

It wasn’t until I started working in the social media space that I was able to understand and dissect the reaction I had. It was a very simple thing that these days people come to expect from a website without necessarily being able to verbalise it…there was simply no interaction. All the flow of information was one way; from him to the visitor.
“But Shane” I hear you say, “isn’t being able to read about the band and download their tracks interacting with the band?” Well my answer to that is “NO IT IS NOT!”

Interaction must be 2-way.

This realisation is not a new concept at all. I have read other blog posts which talk of the virtues of having 2 way communication, such as commenting, rating, blogging, discussion forums etc, on websites. However what struck me was not that the site didn’t engage me, it was that I was positively turned off by it.

I realised that my daily use of sites such as Bebo, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, Digg etc had given me certain expectations of any web experience and when I was confronted with a site which didn’t meet these expectations I was repelled by it. Some companies are starting to realise the importance of empowering their audience (eg www.bbc.com) however there are still so many examples of websites that don’t.

I am part of a new generation of web users who have been brought up with information at our fingertips. The web is fundamental to our lives and therefore it is the most important battleground for brands to compete in.

This generation has a new philosophy:

•    We believe that we own the brands that we use and that companies are merely custodians of them.

•    We believe that our needs are the most important and any brand which doesn’t do everything to meet them will fail

•    We are empowered by the ease at which we can compare products and the ease at which we can switch brands.

It feels as though we had been living in a Feudalistic market where the consumers were peasants, the big brands were vassals and the fiefs were the marketplace. Now the peasants are taking control of the fiefs and a new truly democratic marketplace is opening where the brands answer to the consumer.

Some people I have spoken to argue that these consumer philosophies have always been there and that this is nothing new. I would completely agree that human nature would suggest that we would hold these beliefs as true but up until now the consumer has never had the power nor information required to do anything about it. We now do and the latest incarnation of the social web has given it to us.

The most exciting thing is that this trend is only beginning. Only a small minority of the population of the western world were born with the internet at their fingertips. When today’s teenagers move up through the age groups the % of the population who subscribe to these beliefs will grow exponentially.

There is no doubt in my mind that the all businesses who operate in the B2C market will be majorly affected by this in the coming years. If you run a business whether it is a small cottage industry or a global enterprise and you are not actively keeping on top of the social changes occurring on the web then you are not just missing a great opportunity to fully understand your customers, you are also at risk of being left behind. This is a new and exciting age and I am glad I am here to be part of it.