I was looking through the class blogroll for some inspiration and I came across Clayton Dang’s blog about Google+. In his blog, Clayton made made a very compelling case for some of google+’s features which are superior to Facebook’s. This example got me thinking about the reasons why consumer’s sometimes choose a seemingly inferior product. Finally, I realized that consumers don’t choose inferior products, they choose products which provide them with the greatest value even if that value is largely dependant on some overlooked or intangible factor, and not just the hard facts about a product. In the The case of Facebook and Google+, this fact or is each website’s user base. Since Facebook and Google+ are social networking sites the primary service which they provide to their users is to allow them to connect with their friends online. However, in order to provide this service, the site must actually have a person’s friends as users. This provides an instant barrier. Google+ could have the best website in the world, but if people cannot connect to their friends than google+ does not deliver any value to consumers. Another example of this was the Blackberry vs. Iphone debate at my highschool. Based on features and technology alone, the iphone was a better piece of equipment for a highschool student. Even so, everyone used blackberry’s. This was because when everyone had blackberry’s, everyone used bbm. This single and essentially redundant feature when placed beside texting was enough to defeat a better piece of technology. These two examples demonstrate that consumers often make choices based on intangible or underweighted factors with little regard for what product is objectively “better.”

In class today we were discussing how Social Media has the potential to backfire on a company by providing customers with and incredibly public, and easily accessible forum to voice any bad experiences they may have had. I agree with much of what was said in class about the potential upsides and downsides of social media from the point of view of companies, but I was thinking about it more afterwards and realized that one major risk that is never discussed is the tendency for companies (and bcom students) to look at social media as a kind of magic marketing tool that will help them to reach so many new consumers and increase there popularity and sales. However, I think the reality is that social media does not always deliver as promised. The biggest problem with advertising using social media is that it requires customers to take action. A facebook page and a Twitter profile are not like television ads or billboards. The customer can’t just sit on the couch or drive past and have the desired message delivered to them. Instead, they actually have to go out and find it which takes effort on the part of the consumer. This lowers the potential of reaching new customers with social media because the only people who are going to look for a facebook page or twitter profile are customers which already use and enjoy the companies products. A final barrier is that fact that many people just don’t think of liking companies on facebook or following them on twitter, because unless it carries some potential benefit for consumers it just seems like volunteering to be bombarded with ads. These factors among others mean that social media is farm from a magic wand, and is just another tool in the marketers bag of tricks