Are customers using crowdsourcing to find your products?

It’s time to get a new TV so I went to my local electronics store see the choices.  I wanted to compare the options and then select which model, brand and type would best suit my needs.  I found a store salesperson that walked me through the choices and we focused on several models that would be ‘perfect’ for me.  We talked for about 15 minutes and I was left to make my decision.  It was only a minute before another customer came up to me and told me the exact opposite of what the salesperson had said.  The customer told me the model the salesperson recommended was about to be discontinued because of a quick bulb burnout, surmising that the salesperson ‘was probably just trying to move excess product’.

Delaying my purchase so I could do more research, I located a whole slew of communities and customer comments talking about the bulb problems with warnings to future customers that ‘they’d be disappointed’.  I also found suggestions of like brands and models that had better bulb life.  I was able to post my own question and get several rapid responses.

I’d say that my TV purchasing experience was influenced by crowdsourcing, both online and off.  I was able to get a straight answer from those using the products themselves instead of only relying on a salesperson that had a stock pile of about-to-be-discontinued TVs.  In the store, a helpful customer steered me in the right direction and online I found confirmation with literally hundreds of customers in the ‘crowd’ confirming the issue with the bulb. Continue reading “Are customers using crowdsourcing to find your products?” »