Twenty five years ago, if you wanted to buy something, anything, you had a few of options:
- Go to a shop / face-to-face with the buyer
- Order via a catalogue / respond to a classified ad
- Order via the phone
There was no internet, social media, and therefore zero ecommerce going on. Want to reminisce on evolution of Digital - take a look at this previous post of mine Digital evolution infographic.
A customers decision to buy was based upon (in retrospect) fairly limited information, whilst the masses perception of the brand/product was largely based upon the advertising dollars pumped into the marketing, or 'pushing' of the product.
Sure word-of-mouth influence occurred but only within a persons immediate network of friends, and the friends would have to know that the person was thinking about purchasing a specific product/service to know whether to give up their knowledge and opinion.
