will “live recommendations” obsolete local review sites?
We’ve grown up to view online business reviews and recommendations as something that gets accumulated into organized sources of browsable content. TripAdvisor and Yelp represent two highly successful cases-in-point of the power of critical mass to reviews.
The dominating model of shopping behavior goes something like this…
search > initial select > search again for opinion to test your decision > transact
As noted in Search Engine Watch, “the search continues because search engines aren’t the consumer’s most trusted source of advice”. As we all know, we’re spending more and more time socially connected. This creates a new whole stepping off point for shopping behavior. In theory, the potential exists to invert the experience and infuse trust and recommendations into the front end of shopping.