Of Internet, products and online research

If you asked me, whats the most revolutionary invention of our age, like most people I would say the internet. Needless to say it has trasnformed how we live and interact through facebook and what not. But why the grandiloquence all of a sudden? Here's why

Recently I wanted to buy a garage door opener. Being lazy, I did not research online. I went to Home Depot, the Genie Powerlift exclerator (this wont be about the opener, I promise) seemed nice, it had a lifetime warranty, screw drive system, which the sales person said was very quiet and so I picked it (I have a feeling these salespeople kind of know what you are inclined towards and tend to push you towards that, but anyways..).

Before installing it, I thought of doing some online research. Searching a bit I found the winner. Clearly Chamberlain whisper drive had more and better reviews. The decision had been made for me. I cared little as to what the few reviews that came for Genie had to say. I promptly went back to the store, returned the Genie model and picked up Chamberlain.

I consider myself a customary researcher. I spend little time on online research if I am buying something under 50 bucks. 50-300, I spend some time, not a whole lot. Over 500, do lot more research before buying. If I were to distribute people on the basis of habits of doing online research, I would put about 10% of people in the thorough research category, about 25 in my customary research category and the rest in no-research category.

What would happen if that 10% grew to say 70%? It can grow that high once the barriers for doing the research are dropped. Say you are standing in front of the 4 brands of tissue paper rolls in Costco, and suddenly a star rating pops up on all of them showing how they were rated by many people (like the pranav mistry demo).. why would you not want to have the opinion of a 100 people before you buy something? When you were going to pick up something based on the price, the ad-campaign, the few features mentioned on the roll, you now are leaning towards the highest rated one. Even if it means you are going to shell out a few more bucks. What would have been a semi-random decision, is now least random. The Genie brand would probably have met my needs of quietness and power in a garage door opener just as much, but I had to pick up the highest rated one. You'll come back a few weeks later only to see that there are only two brands of tissue rolls remaining on the aisle, the most expensive one and the least expensive one. You'll read in the news a few days later that the other two have filed for bankruptcy.

In that day and age there will be clear winners and losers and we will all be the same. (I am sure its not that straight forward, but just a sleepless-mid-night thought :)).