The Information

This comes from another conversation I had with Jeevan when Amanda came during Author's Day. According to Jeevan, long time ago, people bought something either because they were loyal to the brand or a friend or family recommended it. But, now we make our decisions based on opinions of complete strangers, a prime example being Yelp. I also use Yelp a lot, especially when I am looking for new restaurants to try. It also never fails to amuse me that people yelp about pretty much...anything. You can even yelp a hiking trail behind UC Berkeley. I think examples like Yelp show that perhaps the influence on our decisions has become more democratic. That is, we gear toward things that a majority of public likes, even if the public is a faceless mass with which we are not personally acquainted. When I use Yelp, I usually base my decisions on the overall rating and recommendations that a lot of reviewers agree on, without really caring too much about the individual reviews. I would hate to say that this act is about going mainstream or anything, but there is an appeal in following an agreement made by a majority of people. A sense of security comes with it.



But, what about individual food or restaurant review blogs? (Oh, I go to a lot of those...a lot...) It's definitely the opinions of a single person, but I find myself going back to the same blog and really reading each entry if I like the public persona of the blogger. And this persona tends to come out in their writing style and even the format of the blog. Strangely, it seems easier to trust a public image that I infer from a piece of writing than a real person that I meet. I guess when I meet a person in reality, there are so much more information about them (impression, body language, facial expressions etc.) that I get a little insecure about what kind of person they really are. Too much complexity... wonderful but befuddling :) Regardless, the blogger has managed to market him/herself through the writing, which influences what decisions I make.

Everything does seem to come down to marketing...and if it does, then Yelp could also be a marketing tool, a tool that uses the power of information, even if the information might be what types of dishes are on the restaurant menu. Nowadays, persuasion just won't cut it, because getting information is just as important to the consumers. For example, now that so many people are health conscious, the transparency of the ingredients in food product is crucial. Just the fact that the food product has all natural ingredients is enough to make me want to buy it, even if what the company did was to just list all the ingredients on the product label. If the label was rather secretive (although I am sure that illegal now), I would be a bit skeptical. Who know, I might be chugging down preservatives without knowing.