peer reviews Archives - Social Email Marketing

When looking back at this week’s earlier post regarding the shift from selling to buying, I remembered an article I wrote a while ago about what I then called ‘the pull customer’.

The marketing and communication reality has changed dramatically since the arrival of new digital media. Whether we call it Web 2.0, social media or any other buzzword, we tend to summarize these changes as the end of mass communication as we knew it, an explosion of new communication channels, the fragmentation of media, the participation of people in the marketing and communication process, customer-centricity, more focus on value and relevance and so on.

One of the changes, that is going on since many years now, is the fact that communication and marketing have increasingly become a ‘pull’ instead of a ‘push’ process. Remember those words? Push versus pull marketing?

As you know, the buying process has changed a lot. People prepare their purchases using a vast array of information channels, including social media, blogs, web sites, peer reviews, etc., prior to actually buying something.

However, those are not the only social changes in the buying and selling process.

In a report by the European research firm, InSites Consulting I read that 4 out of 10 European consumers search for information on brands and products via comparison, expert and user review sites.

The company sees more changes in online shopping but, as I will cover further, in online selling by consumers too. The factors that are influencing these changes include Web 2.0 and social media: social networking, conversing, sharing, tagging, content generation and community participation.