Vault Kicks, Well So Do Marketers!

Chapter Five of Citizen Marketers told the story of how one man’s quest to save Surge, the coca-Cola mountain dew like drink, turned into a community cause that demanded attention. Coke never brought back the drink Surge, they created a “new” soda called Vault, which tastes the same as Surge.
The point of this story was to express the fact that companies should listen to their customer online. Speaking from a personal point of view, I spend 4 times as much time online than I do watching TV. And then, I don’t watch commercials, unless my remote control is broken. This shows that companies need to watch what their customers of doing online; maybe even have someone from the company monitor their product on google, seeing what comes up when it is typed up.
First off, if you search your product and you are not even on the first page, because it is taken up by fan sites or blogs, then you have a problem. This means your site is static. Don’t just put up content and leave it there expecting people to find it. Update it, start a blog, add video, anything to draw attention.
Citizen Marketers around the world who love certain products are making sites for them as hobbies. “Their focus is often an attempt to transcend brand awareness into action by creating amateur networks of affiliation”(p105). These sites could have a positive or negative affect on a product which is why I stressed above for a company to monitor what is being said about them online.
Another reason companies need to scan the internet for their product is because of “market helping behavior”. It “describes the behavior of everyday people who help one another with decisions on what to buy and who to buy it from”. Personally, I rarely go out and buy something without looking up reviews. This goes from anything from books and CDs to televisions and hair dye. Having negative reviews spread across the internet is not a good thing and should be monitored, because chances are the problem is the product and not the people. Studies done throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s showed that “40% of a retailers clientele was typically based on the recommendations of other people” (p109). If that was before Web 2.0, imagine what the percentage is now. . .