Customer's New Voice: Extreme Relevancy and Experience through Volunteered Customer Information

CHAPTER 9 How Consumers Will Buy Tomorrow

The recent decade of evolution has seen tremendous growth in tools to help consumers buy rather than one-way selling and marketing techniques that have previously dominated the consumer’s world. The best-known example of this evolution from one-way selling and marketing techniques to more of a buying enablement utility is Amazon’s buying utilities for consumers. Amazon doesn’t explicitly sell or advertise but instead provides buyers with useful information that is largely independent of a one-sided business agenda (i.e., buy our product because we want to sell it).

To assist a consumer’s buying, Amazon has provided support of buying tools that are not based on a business bias (except when there is financial benefit to the consumer) but more real information about other consumer buying behavior (i.e., straightforward transparency):

• Special Offers and Product Promotions
• Frequently Bought Together
• What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
• Customer Reviews and ranked “Most Helpful Customer Reviews”
• Product Details
• Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
• Customers viewing this page may be interested in these sponsored links
• Customer Questions and Answers
• Your Recently Viewed Items and Featured Recommendations

The next decade will see an evolution of these types of tools for the consumer with a migration of similar tools that are independent of a particular business platform such as Amazon. The focus will be on business-independent ...