« new design replaces generic | mobile upgrade »

time consuming research

February 21st, 2006 | general

Thanks to the internerd, consumers can research and study products, before making purchases, more than ever. Comparing the pro/cons of different models and various brands is easy since it seems every site feels compelled to share their opinions with the world. Of course you have to be careful when basing your decisions on online reviews. Just because one site rates a product as ‘best evgnar’ doesn’t guarantee it is the best of it’s kind. I usually try to find at least 4 or 5 different sites that review the same product and then make judgement about the product, hoping that between the multiple websites I’ll be able to form a non-bias review.

The other thing we can thank internerd for is making consumers smarter. Remember the days when you went to the store and whatever you saw on the shelves was thought to be the entire line of products available? Yep, thanks to company websites, we can now make things difficult for the average store sales clerk by saying “the company’s website has a cheaper model listed, but I don’t see it in your store…can you get it?”. Then we laugh as the sales clerk starts to panic and say “I haven’t heard of that model” while they nervously flip through their product sales manuals of available products.

But the main question: Is life (as far as buying stuff) really that much better? Sure, I like to think I know more about the products before buying them, but I didn’t do that bad in the pre-internerd days either. Take my Gibson SG guitar for example. I went to a music store looking for a Jackson Dinky Reverse with the stone finish. They didn’t have it, I was bummed. My dad said “how about that Gibson?” pointing at the SG. I got the SG and still consider it to be one of the best purchasing decisions I’ve ever made. I could go on and on about snowboards, bikes, guitar amps, and even NES games and CDs that turned out to be good purchases with little, if any, research/comparing at all. Now sure there were a few rubbish purchases in there, but compare that to the present. Now I sit in front of my computer scanning websites, reading reviews, drooling over 360 degree flash images, and comparing prices. The problem is that while I’m still making some good purchases, some buys are still poor choices. People need to realize that the occasional ‘bad buy’ will never go away.

2 Comments

  1. PDF
    February 21st, 2006 at 11:52 pm

    I don’t look to the review sites so much as I do the vendor sites to see what is available. Then I find something awesome on their site and go to my local shop to buy it only to be turned away cause the shop only stocked the crappy models, which, had I not known about the rad models, maybe I would have gone for but instead leave empty handed.

  2. matches
    February 22nd, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    While I agree with PDF that the online review sites aren’t perfect or even worth looking at all the time, it’s nice to have some information before you make a big purchase and sites like CNet are willing to do a little digging so you don’t have to.

    But to answer your main question, yes. Review sites may not be of any necessary value, but ecommerce sites and p2p sites like ebay and even craigslist make it possible for you to find that one thing you really, really want with a minimal amount of work. As someone who likes buying things and is also prone to laziness, this is a godsend.

Comment

Most Recent Comments

Archives

Categories