The consumer's always wrong

Why else would visitors to consumer rating sites like Deja.com rank Rolling Rock the second-best beer and Alan Keyes the top presidential candidate?

By Mark Gimein

Nov 10, 1999 | As a child, I spent several years of afternoons happily engrossed in "Family Feud," and ever since I have had a mania for polls and surveys. Not only have I always wanted to know what other people think -- this is a basic human trait -- but I have always had a particularly urgent need to know exactly what percentage of other people are thinking it. Since "Family Feud" asked contestants to guess the results of a survey of 100 Americans, (contestants would be presented with questions like, "Name an animal likely to be found on a farm," and would score the most points for guessing the most common answers), my vision of utopia, is knowing what 100 Americans think about everything, all the time: what percentage of them like the new Fox sitcom; what percentage think Kenmore dryers chew up their clothes; and what percentage think Margaret Thatcher is still the prime minister of Great Britain.

My little fantasy of having instant access to a compendium of opinion surveys might have been preposterous before the Web, and yet in just a few months we have gotten much closer than we ever previously imagined to my peculiar vision of a plebiscite society.

When Amazon.com launched its online bookstore, its most striking feature (besides the simple fact that it let people buy books online) was that Amazon encouraged users to rate and discuss books in what amounted to virtual bookstore aisles. Being able to find out what other readers think about books that you're thinking of buying was a natural and enticing use of the Internet.

Amazon itself has extended the ratings idea to a host of products besides books. And the initial idea has spawned a whole new sector of the Web: sites devoted to consumer ratings.

Consumers instantly reaching a wide audience with their take on whether their money was well spent is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic effects of the Internet. For professional marketers, it is undoubtedly also one of the scariest. Remember the advice your mother/teacher/best friend gave you in, oh, about third grade? "Don't get mad, get even"? A lot of people now have a way to get even with companies they believe gave them a bad deal -- and they see getting even as a public service.

Take Greg Plough, a onetime Prodigy customer who was so dissatisfied with the service he got from the Internet access provider that he posted a dismal review online. "I wanted to send out a warning to the millions of people who are getting shafted by [Prodigy's] rebate deal," he wrote on one consumer review site.

Next Page: And the diners' choice award goes to ... Philadelphia?

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