Is the customer really in charge?
So in the past couple of years there has been a lot of talk about the democratization of media, citizen marketing, the amateur hour, and other themes & memes pointing to the fact that the customer is now in charge. He owns the message; she decides what happens to the brand, etc.
Fact is – the vendors are no longer is charge. Nobody would argue against that point anymore.
But does that automatically equate with saying that the customer is now in charge?
Academic research about democratic sites like DIGG shows that a majority of what makes it to the front page comes from a very small number of people – in fact, researchers talk about the “tyranny of the minority.” Other research, such as the one done by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell and reported in their Citizen Marketers book, finds that the percentage of people who actually create and broadcast content is 1%.
So is the customer really in charge? Or is it a small group of non-democratically elected loudmouths who now controls the message?
This is just one of the topics that we will talk about this afternoon during the interview with Jackie Huba.
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October 12th, 2007 at 11:43 am
This is an interesting remark which I believe to be very true. What reamains is that this minority is still under the radar and is therefore a difficult to please and very tough crowd. You can also think like this: for evey e-mail we get complaining about something, there are some hundreds of people who do not even bother to contact us. So, this 1 pct loudmouths, does probably equal more pct of our customers.
October 15th, 2007 at 7:15 am
This small group you are referring to seems similar to what the Diffusion of Innovation theory calls the opinion leaders. They are a small group that decide on what is good and what is bad and the rest of the world just follows them…
October 15th, 2007 at 8:06 am
The group of people you are referring to sounds a bit like what the Diffusion of Innovation theory calls the opinion leaders. Basically, they are a small group of people who influence others on what goods are great and what goods are not-so-great…