آگاهی مصرف کننده و رفتارهای متفاوت خرید مشتری: ابر بازار سنتی و مبادله ی کالا برای خرید ارزانتر و مبادله ی کالا برای خرید اعتبار برای سودمندی بیشتر

As truly informed consumers are increasingly able to find exactly what they want and willing to pay premium prices to obtain products with perfect fit for them, companies have responded with new product portfolio strategies and new pricing strategies, based on the concepts of resonance marketing and hyperdifferentiation. This is not just consumers’ pursuit of products that are better, but rather better for them. It is not trading up, but rather trading out. In this paper we offer a more complete explanation of changes in consumer behavior, based on consumers’ new-found informedness, and an understanding of consumers’ pursuit of products that truly meet their individual wants and needs, cravings and longings. This paper also contributes to a deeper understanding of how online reviews are linked to sales. Recent empirical studies suggest that consumers use information in different ways in different shopping experiences, and that consumers’ purchasing behavior varies across different online shopping experiences; consequently, the best predictors of the success of different online products will therefore vary depending on what consumers are buying and why and how they are buying it.

With the publication of The Long Tail [2] our earlier work on resonance marketing and hyperdifferentiation [13], [14] and [15] has become more relevant, and the problems have become of greater interest to more scholars in the field of information economics (c.f. [9] and [10]). However, The Long Tail, at least as Anderson has popularized it, focuses exclusively on retailing; more specifically, within the long tail of retailing Anderson largely focuses on information goods, goods that can be sold online, or both1; after reflection the limitations of this work become clear: • An online vendor like Amazon does not worry about inventory holding costs or turnover rates, since Amazon frequently does not take possession of long tail goods before shipment to the customer. Both Amazon and their suppliers benefit from the fact that information goods like books, CDs, and DVDs, are shelf-stable and do not spoil. A traditional grocer has to worry about both holding costs and turnover rates. Products that do not sell, or that do not sell quickly, occupy critical floor space and can destroy profitability in a number of ways. Those that code out (spoil or pass sell-by dates) before sale can be even worse for profitability. • A pure information good often has minimal per copy production costs. For example, stocking all Indian movies in the US because they cost nothing to produce ignores the fact that the original production cost was justified by a large domestic market for Bollywood films, for which the movie was not a long tail offering. The per copy cost for a pound of Roquefort cheese, or for a pound of dry aged USDA prime New York strip steak, or for a rose gold Patek Philippe Grand Complications wrist watch will be quite significant.2 • Some products really do succeed in defending the mass in the middle, which has not vanished. While retailers may earn very little selling Tide laundry detergent or Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise due to competition from other retailers, these products are dominant in their marketplace and remain profitable for their manufacturers. We feel that it is especially valuable at this time to examine the assumptions of resonance marketing and to explore how improved customer information endowments alter the strategies of new entrants and established incumbents. We believe that it is likewise valuable to examine where improved customer information endowment does and does not drive customers out of the established middle and into the long tails. This paper reviews our earlier work on hyperdifferentiation and resonance marketing only to the extent needed to then perform some empirical testing of a purchasing situation in which consumers appear to behave in a way that is counter to our earlier findings. It is not a general review of resonance marketing nor a comprehensive test of our assumptions under a complete range of purchasing situations.

This paper attempts to make four modest contributions: • Review what is known about customer informedness and the evidence that suggests it is indeed affecting both consumer purchasing behavior and corporate marketing strategies. • Suggest that traditional purchasing strategies involving mass-market mass appeal offerings like Tide, Budweiser, Hershey’s and Coca Cola are being augmented by trading down (into new discount offerings like Jet Blue and new discount channels like hotels.com) and trading out (into new extremely differentiated offerings that seek to produce resonance with small groups of consumers, like Victory Hop Devil Ale and Dogfish Head World Wide Imperial Stout, Luna Powerbars, or Arizona and Tazo Ice Teas). • Present simplified mathematical models that would provide one possible explanation for and description of these consumer behaviors. • Present at least some empirical evidence and statistical analyses to suggest that these behaviors are indeed present at least some of the time. We have attempted to be careful not to overstate or over-claim our findings. That is, we are not claiming that resonance marketing has eliminated other forms of corporate product positioning strategy or eliminated other forms of consumer purchasing behavior, we have not claimed that our models represent the only mathematical explanations of or descriptions of these behaviors, and we have not claimed that online ratings drive this behavior. We are claiming that these models do describe these behaviors, and that there is data to suggest that these behaviors are present in some categories and some consumer groups, at least some of the time.