Business in dialogue

Recommendations and reviews influence the decision behavior and businesses make smart use of it. By making it easy for the online consumer, they are likely to rate, rank, review, ‘send a friend’, ‘Like’ and  become the companies best promoter. But how valuable and credible are these recommendations?

Because the majority of creators and reviewers are motivated altruistic reasons, consumers have learned to assess, trust and use their peers’ opinion. Business 2 Community nicely captures how consumers look for reliable Word of Mouth with different sources depending on their need and the phase of the decision making process. A Dutch marketing blog mentions a research by Stefan that showed the importance for recommendations being based on experience and including a critical element.

Tools such as ‘Likes’ are therefore less credible, because there is no room for any critical note. 70 % of the respondents felt that ‘Likes’ are used too much and 42 % says they don’t even notice the ‘Likes’ of their friends.

To come back to the article on B2C, it assumes that online consumers are capable of finding their own source. ‘Likes might be overrated as a recommendation tool, the wisdom of the crowds can work great for creating awareness and arouse peoples network. For products with more informational purchase motives, marketers might want to focus more on the in dept review sites. So I guess for every marketing strategy there is a different use of social media tools that fits best.

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