Page 187 - Electronic Commerce

Chapter 3

transaction, people who frequent local bookshops tend to buy large numbers of
books over time. Thus, the bookseller’s investment in developing personal con-
tacts is often rewarded. In this scenario, you may visit your local bookshop and
strike up a conversation with a knowledgeable bookseller. In the personal con-
162
tact model, this would most likely be a bookseller with whom you have already
established a relationship. The bookseller would offer an opinion on the book
based on having read that book, books by the same author, or reviews of the
book. This opinion would be expressed as part of a two-way conversational
interchange. This interchange usually includes a number of conversational ele-
ments (small talk, such as discussions about the weather, local sports, or poli-
tics) that are not directly related to the transaction you are considering. These
other interchanges are part of the trust-building and trust-maintaining activities
that businesses undertake to develop the relationship element of the personal
contact model. The underlying one-to-one communication model appears at
the bottom of Figure 3-9 and is labeled “Personal contact.” The defining
characteristic of information gathering in the personal contact model is the
wide-ranging interchange that occurs within the framework of an existing trust
relationship. Both the buyer and the seller (or the seller’s representative)
actively participate in this exchange of information.
• The Web: To obtain information about a book on the Web, you could search
for Web site references to the book, the author, or the subject of the book.
You would likely identify a number of Web sites that offer such information.
These sites might include those of the book’s publisher, firms that sell books
on the Web, independent book reviews, or discussion groups focused on the
book’s author or genre. The New York Review of Books and Booklist maga-
zine, both staples of mass media book promotion, are available online. Book
review sites that did not originate in a print edition, such as BookBrowse,
also appear on the Web. Most online booksellers maintain searchable space
on their sites for readers to post reviews and comments about specific titles.
If the author of the book is famous, there might even be independent Web
fan sites devoted to him or her. If the book is about a notable person, inci-
dent, or time period, you might find Web sites devoted to those notable
topics that include reviews of books related to the topic. You could examine
any number of these resources to any extent you desired. You might
encounter some advertising material created by the publisher while searching
the Web. However, if you choose not to view the publisher’s ads, you will find
it as easy to click the Back button on your Web browser as it is to surf
television channels with your remote control. The Web affords you many
communication channels. Figure 3-9 shows only one of the communication
models that can occur when using the Web to search for product informa-
tion. The model labeled “The Web” in Figure 3-9 is the many-to-one
communication model. The Web gives you the flexibility to use a one-to-one
model (as in the personal contact model) in which you communicate over
the Web with an individual working for the seller, or engage in many-to-many
communications with other potential buyers. The defining characteristic of a
product information search on the Web is that the buyer actively participates
in the search and controls the length, depth, and scope of the search.

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