Insights from Consumer to Consumer

Whose opinion do you trust? The expert or the friend?

With the rise of many digital forums that allow experts, as well as individual consumers, to provide their POV on products and their quality, the question arises on who do you trust?

Guy Kawasaki takes a stand on the issue in this post, quoting reseach that “common word-of-mouth advertising by regular folks is more powerful than ‘key influencers.’”.

While I think that we may find word-of-mouth to be more credible, there is also a role for key influencers as well. I believe the differing forms of advice between experts and peers operate in two distinct parts of a consumer’s brain.

The expert lets them know that the product does what it is supposed to and that its technical abilities are strong, all reinforcing the rational reasons to buy a given product.

The peer advice works on a different level. It is a reassurance that the product in question is right for them; that people just like themselves had used it and found it useful. It’s almost a form of collective support for a particular buying decision.

A personal example I had was when I was buying a digital SLR camera several months ago. I consulted all the expert websites and reviews, who let me now the technical abilities of all the cameras I was looking at and how they, as experts, felt about the product.

I also trolled through the online camera forums for user experiences. Somehow having a more personal endorsement from someone who maybe wasn’t a camera pro cemented my choice in a way that the expert opinion did not.

In the end, by satisfying both the rational and emotional parts of my brain, both forms of buying advice helped me make a choice I don’t regret.