Submitted by: Submitted by alokjain1987
Views: 427
Words: 702
Pages: 3
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 11/27/2011 08:39 PM
Birth of a new customer
The proliferation of information sources on the web has created a new breed of buyer: Customer 2.0. Customer 2.0 doesn't want to be sold to through traditional outbound sales and marketing channels, but rather expects to find the relevant information about the companies, products and people they are considering doing business with, through web-based research, as well as participation in customer-to-customer conversations. They want to be educated about their choices before making the decision to engage with any business.
Also the passive customer has become much more active. Earlier companies kept shooting products at the customer and with lack of choices they had to accept the same. But now with so many options available to express themselves, the new customer talks about the product on web and can generate lot of response from fellow customers.
The pace at which this feedback is coming is helping the companies to gauge customer reaction faster than ever. They have helped to co-create the product as well by getting involved with the companies and giving their opinions. This also helps the companies build the right kind of products. One example of this could be –
Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited is a Chinese operator of online games based in Shanghai, established in December 1999 by Chen Tianqiao and Chen Danian. It claimed to have 460 million registered accounts and an average of 1.2 million players at any given time and total employees of the company were less than thousand in 2005. What Shanda did was it created a new business model which could never have been thought of. It gives its customers the right platform on the web along with the necessary online tools to create the online games. There is a small percentage of its customers which create these games and there is lot of positive response from other customers as they like these games. This way Shanda has converted its customers into producers.
Challenges
Handling...