Communities and Social Networks

Veedow

Surfing the net, I come across Veedom. Veedom is one of the new social shopping site founded in early 2007 by Fabio de Bernardi and Matteo Canzi Blanc.

Although the concept of social shopping and the sites related to the subject are still a new phenomenon on the web, Veedom, compared to the competition such as StyleFeeder or MyFaveShop, adopt a new passive method. In this way it suggests products to its members without that their costumers try to find anything.

At the beginning, the only information the system needs are the interests of the subscribers from which the algorithms develop a profile of interest. Competing sites, by contrast, are much more tied to a concept of research which may be browsing the profiles of other users, or browsing by tags, or by typing a real key and then move from there through tags, user profiles etc… In other words, the competition behaves much closer to satisfying a specific need and this when the user accesses the site rather than pure discovery products and satisfy their latent needs, an area in which Veedow is focusing much. Read the rest of this entry »

Companies are increasing the consumers’ likelihood of making a purchase

Today, thanks to Internet, companies have a great possibility to make their products available worldwide and to reach as much consumers as possible. Using blogs, chat rooms, video, social networking website companies can create and maintain a relationship with their consumers and they can interact with them sharing their opinion, suggestions, complaints etc…

Every consumer relies on a specific type of social websites or company website for product and brand information. As a result, companies try to engage directly with them using this social network creating a great opportunity to not only reach more consumers, but also increase their likelihood of making a purchase. But companies should be very careful in using digital marketing tools because they have to consider the impact of online word-of-mouth that can affect the consumers purchase decision. Read the rest of this entry »

The power of online word-of-mouth

Simona, I agree with you that today there are many cases of digital marketing failure.

I think the real problem is that companies are not always aware of the power of online word-of mouth. Consumers today have the possibility to convey and share their opinion with other people about products or services they have bought online. They can voice their satisfaction or dissatisfaction regarding a specific brand or company, undermining the confidence of these companies to exert full control over their consumers. If the majority of consumers convey negative experiences with a specific company that sell its products online it will lose its credibility on the web and its digital marketing effort will no longer be profitable. Read the rest of this entry »