We had a big dump of snow in Atlantic Canada yesterday. Being outside yesterday tackling all this white stuff made me guiltily realize I still hadn’t put winter tires on my van.
So I head to Canadian Tire Online to check out their winter tires and found myself a bit surprised at what I encountered.
Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I couldn’t imagine sending this to facebook, digg or de.li.cious. Sure, they’re on sale, but not out of this world on sale. I can just imagine the looks on my friends faces in facebook if I sent this. I realize it’s a storewide option, so I tried to envision cooler items at Canadian Tire that I’d want to add to my facebook…. possibly, yes. And maybe this is where gender kicks in. I could maybe envision sharing a beautiful patio set that would be on sale. But winter tires just don’t have the same effect on me.
Jason Rowser blogged that he recently discovered that yellowpages.com had an add to facebook option.
Is it just me, or do some of these social networking options for some commerical purposes just seem odd? At this point, I don’t think there’s enough relevance for all situations.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:49 am
It’s almost like they are trying to build a market for recommendations through social networking. I’m not sure that I’d use it, but it’s actually an intriguing idea. I just don’t know if it would have more “pull” than Amazon.com book reviews or ePinions (whatever that recommendation site is called). I think it would take the classic maven-connector-saleman combo work (i.e. The Tipping Point) to make it well known and popular. Hm, maybe there’s an opportunity there…
December 5th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I do think there are ways to improve on the system. Get Elastic blog recently mentioned Circuit City and what they’ve done to add more social networking features. They’re creating community within the store though and appear to be building relationships between the store and the customers http://www.getelastic.com/circuit-city-social-network-2/
December 5th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Wow, there is something about a woman and snowtires that does it for me, so i had to digg this blog.
ok, none of these big companies has any real idea what the heck is going on IMO so why not add these options and see what happens?
It is intriguing to think about the power of the masses to rate and tag consumer goods, each other, and places in the world. I imagine that maybe the future will be comprised of people just working at home rating and tagging pages, articles, items, opinons.. nobody really working or commuting to work anymore. and… hmm link social media sites to RFID, purchases, VISA and Airplan and other plastic POP swipe cards and anyone could see (with very little effort) all my data and what tires i have, the oil i use, the food items i buy and frequency, my travel habits, etc.
rating and digging consumer goods is redundant : the information about your habits, what you prefer already exists.
How will VISA and other places compete and sell their information on you if you are offering it up for free?
Maybe we should all start sharing everything we buy to devalue the information already collected on us?
December 5th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Scott hit the nail on the head. Forget harvesting e-mail addresses for spam, think target marketing from such public info.
Still the rating/tagging idea is a good one which might help people find the better quality products. I know I like to read the product reviews when I can find them.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:22 am
That’s very true about what Scott said, but also scary as well especially in light of what’s been happening with facebook recently. I also wonder how much social influence will skew results. If something has a high rating, is someone more likely to give it a high rating because everyone else has? So how accurate will this data be for really understanding individual perceptions or thoughts versus social peer group perceptions?
Certainly the rating and reviews are useful to have. And as Mark mentioned, it may be that they are hoping by sharing via facebook, etc. that it will encourage more reviews (which i do find the reviews for that particular Canadian Tire ad I was looking at appear somewhat hmm prepared).
December 5th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Hmm that’s a bit of a can of worms you’ve opened there Lisa
I can’t get in to their site as they require javascript and a postcode to even start (talk about blocking business), but from your clipping this was presumably a standard shopping cart item.
AYK the customers star rating and comments are as close to web 2 as a shopping cart gets.
I totally agree that this is not the sort of thing that you would socio post on. Except you have - LOL - indirectly.
Now the can of worms I have is that a store has a shopping cart so you can buy stuff. It has pictures and descriptions and you buy it. AFAIC that’s the way it should be. But as you say, that’s very much a web 1.0 model.
Naturally there’s a lot of attention on this subject at the moment, but the question is should a “store” set up its own web 2 and “social” content, so customers can ping it. My issue is that you can’t do that for every product one does (usually in excess of 2000 even for a small store), but why would a customer ping an about page, or a “we think this about tyres this month” page special? Or even a “car maintenance tips for winter” store blog? (though I guess that is closer).
That’s a deeper question dependent on the store.
But what has happened here “naturally” is you have socio blogged about “your dealer/store” and people can ping that. And indirectly you are promoting the store and that product with your opinion.
How viral is that!
How would this appear on facebook ads? If I was in the region and I wanted snow types, i think I’d be pleased in any format. But I would hope it wouldn’t appear as
“Last December, Lisa got stuck in the snow, find out how she hasn’t got stuck since. Bl;a blah snow tyres 5 pence…”
I find that way crass than “snow tyres 5 pence only if today is sunny”
I think I’m saying that there are 3 type of content on the Internet each with its place. I know we want to pigeon hole and group stuff, but I think it can go too far.
WDYT?
Do you really want them to personalise snow tyres in some web 2 wizzy character way? Really?
(When I say store, I mean any business, with a product or service to sell, including this tyre seller - but the word store brings up the correct associations of selling off the page.)
All the best.
Peter
December 5th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Taking Scott’s point, I’m not sure I like the circuit city approach of trying to make a store a community. Amazon style star rating and reviews seems natural. Then you have all the specialist independent review sites and blogs and a magazine sites, to help you choose the product.
I’m really not sure I would shop in a particular store just because they let me talk about them.
I don;t buy at amazon because they let me write reviews. I do appreciate reading reviews though, but I prefer to read them on an independent site.
The trouble with web stores is they usually have no character. Not like a bricks and mortar shop with staff does. I’d like more communication with my web stores, but I don’t think web 2 social thinking really fits with that.
So why do YOU choose the web stores you do choose?
Why Lisa did you want to buy from these people anyway?
Your original choice of them presumably wasn’t because of their web 2 pings. So what was the reason you considered them initially anyway?
All the best.
Peter
December 5th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I actually do tend to give reviews (not so much ratings) a fair bit of credit. The power of word of mouth. It wasn’t the reviews or ratings that suprised me as being part of the store. But the share with facebook/digg aspect. It seemed like an extra “hey let’s do this too, so we can say we can do it” type of feature.
As to the circuit city approach (primarily a brick and mortar store), I think it could work for certain features, ie. technology. If I want to buy a new hdtv system for my house and want to have input about how/what, etc. having feedback from those who bought from the store as well as those in the store may be beneficial. In other words more complex items that may require more research or if there’s a knowledge gap could be useful in a situation like that. And in fact, I often find that salespeople in the store are not always as educated on the products as they should be. So the website can often provide extra information.
As to why I went to Canadian Tire. Merely because it’s the primary automotive store where I live. I had gone to the web site for pricing and in store availability of the tires with the intention of heading there today. So yes as they are primarily a brick and mortar store, using their web site saves me time.
So again, it all comes down to relevance. It DID meet my needs of in store availability and providing pricing. Even a couple of reviews which are handy. So the extra sharing features would be ignored as my needs were met.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
I’d totally missed the socio tag widgets - LOL
I see what you mean. The Facebook one is the most odd, but I can see I could work on the more personal “my” own memory aid style bookmarks of Delicious, Mr Wang and even stumble upon (if it was a great find).
Facebook is strange in itself
Most of my friends are all over the world, so nothing localised would seem to fit nicely. So for a true ship worldwide store maybe, but for a heavy or awkward to ship local items, not so much 
I think you are right. Merchants are just adding these widgets because they can and it is in the newspapers and they are trying to be trendy. But it costs them almost nothing and AYPK just one tag can easily bring in 50~200 fresh visitors.
Very interesting why you chose the tyre place and what you think of circuit city. Very interesting indeed!
Peter
December 12th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I think there is value in social shopping and even built a test site (dealtribe.com) to allow people to openly share deals and acquire product knowledge from others.
People tend to rack their brains trying to make an informed purchase decision even for the most mundane items, like snow tires or appliances. Add in not wanting to pay through the nose and you can see why the term “buyers remorse” was invented.
I think the execution on Canadian Tires part frames this feature as a “spam my friends” idea but there has to be some balance between getting/giving advice from your network and relying on Consumer Reports or bogus/well edited reviews on e-retailer websites.