Management-Ally 9: Believe in strangers

Some forwarded me a link to join a new website www.yepme.com. They claim to be India's first recommendation Engine.

The offer of sending invites and recommending places allows you to accumulate points and thus you are eligible to get your free Reebok shoes (the prime reason for me to click the link)

It makes me wonder, why would someone listen to a recommendations of a complete stranger?? Can i really be an 'influencer' to promote some service or product, that will influence a person from Mumbai or Bangalore to try it. Sounds, far fetched.

I never asked the person sitting on the neighboring table in a restaurant what he had ordered or how the food tasted. Neither do I ask someone at a retail outlet about a particular product. Then why would I go online, read a recommendation of some completely unknown, and the decide. And most cases, I go by the waiter/chef's recommendation or the salesman's advice...I am sure this will be true in most cases.

This thought reflects in my earlier blog about online behaviour. Is our online behaviour vastly different from our real life behaviour??

Also, the fact that someone 'earns' points and there-by rewarded for giving recommendations would kill the purpose of being an unbiased 'reviewer' of a product or service (i am assuming that this site only promotes positive recommendations, and you are rewarded for the same, i might be wrong too)..

Reviewers site, i have seen are usually a message board for venting up. Most of the comments are from people who have an unpleasant experience with the company or brand. This strengthens the saying - a happy customers says to 3, and an unhappy one to 3000.

I think the more workable model for the review/ recommendation sites to be successful would be to get the customer response as soon as they have experienced the product or service. Here a judicious mix of micro-blogging through mobile (SMS) would be the best way...

Cheers

Santosh

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