Library Revolution

I came across this article from Business Week a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to post about it for a while now. The gist of the article isn’t anything new. It talks about the shift away from “traditional one-way messages to consumers” in favor of a more conversational, word of mouth based approach. Like I said, nothing new.

What I like about the article, however, is both its simplicity in outlining the trend in a very understandable way and the idea that this is some kind of “technology-enabled shift back to pre-industrial market behavior.”

“…while most of today’s adults are well acclimated to this “industrial marketing” approach, it does not reflect the historical norm of human behavior. For thousands of years before communications became industrialized, people chose a bakery or blacksmith based on word-of-mouth recommendations, reputation, and social networks. Selection of a vendor might reflect social class, neighborhood, recommendation, or personal relationship… So today, as a new set of community technologies develop on the Internet, we should not be surprised to discover that the sociology of how we buy isn’t new at all. In fact, it is as old as civilization. Today’s markets will come to resemble these pre-industrial markets, with some major exceptions. Our pre-industrial ancestors were constrained by time and distance in developing opinions about vendors. But in the post-industrial world, reputation, relationships, and recommendations can come at any time from anywhere to affect a purchase decision.”

An interesting idea. Put it that way, and maybe the whole idea of ‘letting go of the message’ a little seems less scary.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Etc., Library Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.