| The
Revolting Consumer
Revolting, according to the dictionary, can
be applied either to someone rebelling against
oppression or to someone who is repellent and
abhorrent. Both definitions seem to fit today’s
consumer. The marketplace is a war zone. Businesses
are warring ferociously against each other for
customers and dollars. And they are also engaged
in a kind of guerrilla war with consumers. In
that war, businesses are increasingly facing rejection,
resistance and downright sabotage. Both sides
benefit from — and are affected by —
new technologies.
Marketers may face a backlash from consumers
fed up with useless features built into products
and annoyed at the assumption of their receptiveness
to any new product. Consumers are also increasingly
annoyed and even enraged by what they see as intrusiveness
on the part of marketers — spam, autodial
marketing calls, junk mail and junk inserts in
mail, unwanted faxes, etc. This is compounded
by what many perceive to be a decline in service.
This point of view is summed up by William Gibson’s
sardonic observation that “far more creativity
today goes into the marketing of products than
into the products themselves.”
In response to what is perceived as an overly
aggressive marketing onslaught, consumers are
enlisting technology to enable them to prevail
against superior forces — answering machines,
zappers, TiVos, spam blockers, list removal, unlisted
numbers. For example, in spite of music industry
efforts, illegal downloading of music and file
swapping go on.
And, of course, marketers are fighting back in
what seems increasingly to be an all-out war:
• The recording industry is attacking the
trading of music files online, going after both
consumers and service providers.
• Technology promises the use of “directional
sound” ads aimed at individual consumers,
as in the movie “Minority Report”.
• More human-seeming virtual agents —
“verbots” and “V reps”
— are being used for customer service, because
they may be more cost-efficient.
Companies are also looking for more peaceful ways
to engage consumers, recognizing that belligerence
and antagonism are not helpful in building customer
relations. Indeed, the Anthropologie chain doesn’t
spend any money on traditional marketing; instead
it focuses on creating a “store experience”
to appeal to its narrowly-defined market niche.
Electronics manufacturers, seeing that 85 percent
of buyers of their products do not feel they are
knowledgeable about those products, offer more
useful product information. And even though TiVo
does not yet appear to be successful, many marketers
feel they must find more unobtrusive ways to advertise.
Look at the nature of the relationship between
producers and consumers:
• More people are giving money or store
gift cards instead of presents, at least partly
to save themselves from what they see as the hassle
of shopping.
• A surprisingly large percentage of companies
don’t respond to e-mails from customers.
• Spam e-mail increasingly involves some
sort of scam.
• Compulsive shopping is being seen as a
medical disorder.
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