Community counts: reviews and comparison sites impact purchase decisions
August 7, 2007 – 12:38 pm
Ok, so my tires on my Jeep don’t look that bad, but it is time to get some new treads, and I’m taking my Jeep in to have some other service done to it, so now is as good of time as ever. Unfortunately its going to set me back about $850 for a set of 4.
How does a technology guy go about looking for new tires? Where else but the internet via a Google search.
I’ve been happy with my existing tires from Michelin, so I wanted to stay in the same general category. Also, Michelin was the award recipient of the 2006 JD Power OE Tire Study, so that reinforced my decision to stick with the brand.
I first stumbled upon a site called Consumer Search: Reviewing the Reviews, and found a link for tires.
I followed the Tire Rack link to read the reviews. I must say I was really impressed with the sheer amount of reviews on the site. The tire in particular I was looking at, the Michelin Cross Terrain SUV, had over 35 million miles of use reported, and one of the top tires in my category and tire size. The information is user reported, but with so many reports, it is likely to be as close as you can get to real usage of the product.
Epinions had generally good things to say about the tire as well.
For general product reviews and price comparison, I use PriceGrabber.com quite a bit, especially for electronics. Of course, the reviews at sites like Amazon.com are always good.
eMarketer points out how product reviews helps increase search traffic, conversion rate and average order size. Consumer electronics in particular is a big category for reviews, and the reviewing site typically only gets 1/2 the sales with many people researching online and buying locally.
Do you use review and comparison sites when completing product research? How much of an impact do the sites have on your purchase decision?
Technorati Tags: community, Michelin, tires, review, comparison
