As you may know, there are many electronic product-geeks in Korea, which is, unfortunately, far from my character. Thanks to these geeks, I don’t have to go to customer service center – either the actual store or the website – of manufacturers when I want to buy a laptop computer or digital camera, or there is a problem with my camera. Instead, I go to “DC inside” (www.dcincide.com) and “NB inside” (www.nbinside.com).
DC of the “DC inside” is Digital Camera, and NB of the “NB inside” indicates NoteBook computer – we usually call laptop computer notebook computer in Korea.
Initiated in 1999, DC inside has, literally, everything about digital camera. Product information, including every brand, is nothing to mention, there being product reviews and problem solutions written by other consumers and collective purchase which allows people to buy products much cheaper. Furthermore, visitors do not only get information but enjoy surfing the website. They make their online community and post various interesting pictures as well. DC inside provides this kind of entertaining space, while managing it systemically. Actually, some pictures and interesting writings have become new coined words or words in fashion mainly used by young netizen.
NB inside, run by DC inside as well, has pretty much similar form to DC inside. Yet, since things that the website deals with are more expensive and need more complicated knowledge, it seems to have more informative factors, while sharing entertaining stuffs with DC inside.
Then, what should actual manufacturers do? All they can do is just to sell their products, and then not to offer after service? Or, making better website or service center, which seems almost impossible because there is no reason for consumers to go to the website displaying only one brand instead of the websites above?
Well...
Many manufacturers have tried to cooperate with these websites. They try to give product information as much as they can to the websites, and apply for launching their products as collectively purchased ones.
One thing seemed special is “Quality Tester”. Some manufacturers offer certain number of products to the websites for free, which invite people to try them for a certain period. Through this program, manufacturers can advertise their products, while consumers try them before actual purchase without any economic pressure.
Like I mentioned above, manufacturers are trying to take advantage of the websites as much as possible. Of course, this attempt benefits consumers as well as the websites.
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2 comments:
Very interesting blog. I wanted to ask the people that write information and make up a vast majority of the site with informatoin what do they get out of it? why would they do that? You did mention that some companies are trying to partner with the site. Which I think it would be a great idea. However, you mentioned that users can post pictures of themselves and information. If this is true then a company can easily profile their customers and narrow their target market by seeking out what kind of customers are buying their product.
Very good questions!!
About voluntarily posting, I guess they do that just like all of us display our blogs or personal websites without any reason - without any "substantial" benefit. The reason why we do that is it's just interesting and we can share each other's blog by blogging our own.
As far as the second question, I totally agree with your view. However, I want to suggest another view.
Since companies manage their customers within thier hands and customers are smart enough to live without companies' special helps, it could be harder for companies to attract and satisfy customers, especially in very competitive market.
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