Marketing: I-Powered Consumers

Aided by the Internet�s rich resources, consumers are rewriting the marketing handbook; restaurant operators need to know the new rules.

By J. Walker Smith -- Restaurants & Institutions, 5/1/2007

J. Walker Smith Marketers take note: Consumers rule. They are newly in charge and wielding their power with relish.

This profound change, a reversal of roles, is not the result of high-tech gadgets or cable modems but of consumers now having unprecedented access to information. And whomever controls information controls the marketplace.

Information access and control have passed from institutions to ordinary people, from marketers to consumers. There is a new balance of power in the consumer marketplace. In the Yankelovich MONITOR tracking of consumer values and lifestyles, 56% of consumers say they know more about the products being sold to them than do people selling these products, up from 48% a year ago.

The Internet, with its peer-to-peer interaction that gives people easy access to the input and advice they crave most, hastens the shift. In situations of uncertainty, risk or high cost, people look first to others like them for guidance about what to do and how to think. Prior to the Internet, cost, time, distance and complexity made such interaction outside of one’s immediate circle difficult and time consuming. With the Internet, though, these barriers are moot. E-mail, file sharing, bulletin boards, blogs, user reviews and recommendations, chat rooms, instant messaging, social-networking sites, Wiki sites, video sites, auction sites—all are different kinds of peer-to-peer interaction online.

With more information in hand, consumers can do new things: get product information from objective sources; initiate requests for information; design customized offerings; employ buying agents; unbundle offerings; pay in alternative ways; and communicate directly with peers and experts. Marketers now find themselves taking direction from consumers, who have enough information to assert control.

The implications and opportunities for restaurants are manifold:

Be transparent. Consumers will find out whatever they want to know, so trying to keep things under wraps is futile. Instead, be completely open about everything, good and bad, so consumers learn they can trust you.
Offer rich information. Don’t force consumers to go elsewhere for insider tips, helpful hints, special recipes, nutritional information or dietary ideas. Show them that you’re the best source for learning more.
Master peer to peer. No longer is a message received by a single person; now it is discussed, and thus in effect received, by groups of people. To win loyalty, you must target the conversation, not individuals, because the conversation shapes individual decisions.
Customize Internet presence by generation. As the accompanying table illustrates, the character of online engagement skews by generation. Boomers are more likely to go online for a specific tidbit, so offer them updates about specials and waits. Gen Xers are more likely to go online to manage their lives, especially their finances; give them advanced scheduling, ordering and budgeting tools. Echo boomers go online for fun and friends; connect them with a community of interests.

No longer at the mercy of marketers or other institutions, consumers are free to invent for themselves what they want. Nowadays, consuming is all about ingenuity and imagination—not just where to go and what to do but what to invent and how to create. Consumers are asserting themselves. There is nothing marketers can do about it other than adapt.