Faced with the clutter

My laptop crashed. 
During the past few days, I have spent several long hours looking for a new one on the Internet. Given the average price of a laptop, I read a lot of documentation and advice from specialized websites about what kind of laptop would suit me best and what technical features I should pay attention to. This reinforced that I have absolutely no interest in computers. This also reminded me of  one of my first few marketing classes: “Usually, the more expensive and long-life the range of product, the more a customer seeks information about it before finally buying the product”. And indeed, that's what happened with my purchase.

But before I started my research, the very first thing I did, almost automatically, was to briefly look for peers recommendations on laptops. 

90% of customers trust peers recommendations.

And only after that I really started to read up for objective technical information (for hours).

To be honest, my intended unbiased research was a failure. Exhausted from taking in all that information and facing a clutter of computer brands, I ended up feeling like I couldn’t make up my mind. This eventually led me to dramatically change my decision-making strategy; I came back to peers recommendations! And, indeed, I bought the brand most of my peers recommended: Apple. 

Thinking about it, Apple was not the most recommended brand by specialist websites considering my needs and the money I had planned to spend on this purchase. I wasn’t quite sure Macs offered the best cost effectiveness and this brand had never seemed to appeal to me more than its competitors. A computer mechanic and a computer engineer had even told me that the components used were the same in Macs and other computers. Still, I bought this brand rather than another one! As a matter of fact, my screening process amongst the numerous different brands –which is the real issue for firms- eventually resulted from my peers recommendations. Even though I knew there would probably be the perfect laptop for me out there -and at a fair price- I was just simply not able to see it stand out clearly in the clutter! As a result, it seems to me that firms now cut through the Internet clutter thanks to peers’ recommendations as much as their brand awareness.

I can’t help thinking that most of these people who had posted comments on the Internet were quite similar to me. They hadn’t bought many more laptops than I had myself and therefore couldn’t really compare them. Above all, their experience with the product was subject to random issues and subjective, biased judgment. But, when hesitating between several brands, I would still trust the majority – my peers- who had an experience similar to the one I will probably have instead of experts, who seem more distant. In a way, I just conformed to my peers’ idea of the best brand, though I initially tried to find my best laptop.  

During the 1950s, most consumers would buy just the same product as their neighbors to conform to others. Since then, lifestyle patterns have changed, and consumers appear to rather reject conformity and seek customized products. Indeed - especially thanks to the abundance of products easily available on the Internet- we like to think that the products we choose on our own among a vast array of possibilities result from the analysis of our specific needs and the finding of the suitable product. But, after this purchase, I would question what I previously thought (at least concerning certain kinds of products); we probably tend to rely on our peers’ opinion more than on our rationalized comparison. 

Alicia Lafage