We care what others think.

written by: stacia_doss
As much as we would like to admit we don't, we do. Take customer reviews, for example. The other day, I started to think. What did we do before customer reviews existed? We would just order random things from catalogues and hoped that what arrived was what he really wanted. Maybe we just assumed that said appliance would work as the catalogue laid it out for us. No video demonstration, no zoom/multiple views, and definitely no customer reviews.

It reminds me of my childhood. My sister and I would flip through the pages of the huge JC Penney catalogue and write down what we wanted for Christmas.

I was a child then, and I will sadly admit that I probably appreciated things a lot more back in those days. If what I received was a piece of crap compared to the description, I wouldn't know any better. Or I simply would not care. Times have changed.

Companies and organizations once had more control over revealing what consumers had to say about them in print. From surveys full of great and horrendous quotes, they could publish the ones in favor of the products...as infomercials do. "The best vacuum I've ever purchased. Awesome!" But now you can 'Google' those same infomercials and read reviews to see if what's "seen on TV" really is the same when you get it. I take it that the first reviewers of a product are ones who decided to go old school...try it and then complain about it to so-and-so, but now so-and-so is a keyboard. Ha!

I hope this gave you a little something to think about. Customer reviews affect 6 in 10 online shoppers. See? I guess that would include me...and probably you, too.

I don't know what I would do without Yelp, Google Reviews, and Amazon.com reviews...or maybe I do. I care what you think.