▶ Your Answer :
With the development
of new communication technologies, companies are expanding their ways of
marketing to increase the sales of their products. However when a consumer
considers a major purchase of a product, I believe reviews from online
communities has the greatest impact when making a choice than recommendations
from friends and magazines.
First of all, reviews
from online communities are technically accurate compared to the recommendation
from friends or magazines. These days consumers’ level of knowledge has
increased rapidly thanks to the internet and these professional reviewers are extremely
active in online communities. As these “prosumers”, also known as professional
consumers, write reviews from their passion, they tend to be more informative
and unprejudiced. Friend's recommendation are mostly subjective and magazine
information are easily manipulated by advertisers, providing readers with
biased information. In my personal experience, before buying any electronic
product, I enjoy using the online communities of early adapters because they
give practical advises and critics on electronic goods. I have never regretted
my purchase after referring to the reviews in online communities.
Secondly, numerous
reviews within an online community makes it more reliable than other sources of
information. Since a number of people have already used a product, it
guarantees us what to expect from the product. For example, when the new iPhone
was launched in 2015, opinions on the new iPhone were pretty similar in general.
Reviewers criticized its lack of creativity and the inconvenient design for
users due to its massive size. As recommendations from friends or magazines
tend to come from one person, either the friend or the editor, they could easily
miss some useful information that other's noticed.
To sum up, because of
its technical accuracy and reliability, online communities are better places
for people to find information when making a decision for a purchase. |