Shoppers: October 06, 1997 issue of New Thinking

October 06, 1997 New Thinking:
Shoppers

Website content management

Home I About I Services I Clients I Contact

New Thinking Home

Subject Classification
Reader Feedback
Subscribing
Unsubscribing
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996

Books by
Gerry McGovern

Content Critical

Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

The Web Content
Style Guide

The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers

October 06, 1997

Shoppers

By Gerry McGovern

What happens when the shopper becomes the shop?

We had the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, but surely as momentous, if not more momentous, is the gradual but persistent collapse of geography brought about by the Internet.

In one sense or another, distance has always been an obstacle to be overcome by commerce. Roads and railways, waterways and skyways, we and our goods and services are forever criss-crossing this planet; busy getting there.

Shops make sense. They bring together a range of goods, sometimes from all over the world, that will satisfy a customer’s needs in food, clothing or whatever. They centralize and create focus. They save time and energy. They make sense.

The digital age and the Internet requires a new sort of sense. We really need to explore everything from a new perspective. Things are new and new things require new definitions. Nothing should be held sacred. Nothing should be held as given.

If shoppers begin to club together, they become a new kind of shop. One where the producer visits to bid for their custom.

Let’s say we have a shoppers car shop. Shoppers join it who plan to buy a car. Car manufacturers come to this car shop to bid for their custom. Prices become more competitive because it’s not about selling one car to one customer, but rather 200 cars to 200 customers.

These commercial scenarios all become possible because of the Internet. It is the great connector, linking up what once were historically isolated consumers and allowing them to come together into cohesive units.

The role of distance and geography in the commercial world needs to be carefully studied, with a particular emphasis on how distance and geography are being transformed by the Internet.

The once relatively isolated consumer becomes much more empowered as they join up with other consumers with a common cause. As they have much more information available for their purchase decisions than ever before.

Distributors and those others in the middle will need to transform themselves. Perhaps they will help the consumers establish well-organized shoppers shops? Perhaps they will offer expert advice to these shops? Whatever these distributors do, they will need to change radically, as the Internet puts greatest pressure on this middle.

Long gone are the days when producers of goods and services could go about their merry way of producing that better mousetrap that people were bound to buy. On the Internet, the producer should see the consumer almost as a partner in the enterprise of creating that right good at the right price.

As consumers we have a whole range of new possibilities open to us. It will require effort on our behalf. We will need to educate ourselves more. We will need to learn to work together. Our shoppers shops will probably only work for the more expensive products. But when they work they will give us a new power and influence, a new ability to radically reshape the way certain commerce is done.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Communication is power
Previous issue: Under our noses
New Thinking homepage

New Thinking Newsletter
Subscribe to this free weekly newsletter covering the role and function of content on the Web.
More info | Privacy policy
Read the current issue

Email Address:

 Subscribe  Unsubscribe

Content management seminar feedback
"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association

“Excellent presenter ... thought-provoking and relevant. I hope we can persuade him to visit us again one day.”
Malcolm Davison
The British Association of Communicators in Business

"Hearing Gerry McGovern speaking, one can feel that he truly masters the subject of content management. He was voted ‘best speaker of the conference’ by delegates."
Toon Lowette
European Association of Directory Publishers

Find out more about Gerry McGovern's seminars

The once relatively isolated consumer becomes much more empowered as they join up with other consumers with a common cause.