communal shopping creates consumer trust

By Mike Davison

New study by Yahoo on how shopping and purchasing habits offline are increasingly shaped by social media.

"As the most trusted source for information, the Internet also offers "communal shopping" — access to a vast community of fellow shoppers, who share knowledge, shopping tools, product reviews and even coupons to help others make purchase decisions. The study showed that 25 percent of people have posted reviews of products or services online, providing a service to other shoppers."

And with mobile technology, consumer opinion sharing can now be realtime with messaging and moblogging about new clothing lines happenning mid shop. Restaurants better be especially on the look out. That fly in the soup (or worse) can be made instantly famous by a well connected customer.

Read more here. 

Brought into the world on Monday, May 15th, 2006 and filed under Uncategorized.

  • Ken
    Nice article! Social networking and online shopping have become such a big part of our lives that they have become daily activities for many people. Do you think that online communal shopping from sites like this Zovue.com will put brick and mortar malls out of buisness? Will things become less expensive due to less overhead of retail stores or more expensive because of individual shipping costs?
  • Steve
    Online communal shopping is a very interesting topic because it can be used to help others shop as well as just being fun. I've read the Yahoo article before and looked at various aspects of shopping with others. Of the sites I've seen, one stands apart and that is Zovue.com. This social networking site allows up to four people to conference in its remote webpage sharing application. So now people can shop online with their remote friends and/or family. The site does not sell its own products but provides a way to "catalogue" shop and then purchase from the online vendors directly.
    This is definately a new twist on communal shopping because the purchase can be made instantly and feedback from your friends is also instant. Technology is catching up with real life but that should be expected.
    This is sort of the reverse of using technology to get feedback while you are physically in the store shopping. This is a case where one uses technology to make their online experience more like the real world.
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