RAnnieB's Comments
Net protests can have an effect on large corporations but maybe not as an isolated method.
A couple of years back a large credit union in Quebec made the news several times. Their "customer service" was nothing short of horrible. Thousands of customers had legitimate gripes about the practices of this credit union. Someone started a blog to complain about this and invited other customers to write about their stories. Within a couple of months there were thousands of posts.
Eventually the blog got the attention of traditional media. The blog creator (or readers I'm not sure) also organized protests in various locations around the province and advertised the blog with stickers near the credit union branches.
Within a year the credit union experienced 15%(if my memory serves me correctly) more account closures than it usually did as well as a significant increase in complaints. The credit union attributed a large part of that increase in account closures to the web protests. Since it did impact their bottom line they took action.
Hence imho web protest can be a useful tool to support consumer activism but the latter is still what will make large corporations notice.
It would just be too easy otherwise ;).
A couple of years back a large credit union in Quebec made the news several times. Their "customer service" was nothing short of horrible. Thousands of customers had legitimate gripes about the practices of this credit union. Someone started a blog to complain about this and invited other customers to write about their stories. Within a couple of months there were thousands of posts.
Eventually the blog got the attention of traditional media. The blog creator (or readers I'm not sure) also organized protests in various locations around the province and advertised the blog with stickers near the credit union branches.
Within a year the credit union experienced 15%(if my memory serves me correctly) more account closures than it usually did as well as a significant increase in complaints. The credit union attributed a large part of that increase in account closures to the web protests. Since it did impact their bottom line they took action.
Hence imho web protest can be a useful tool to support consumer activism but the latter is still what will make large corporations notice.
It would just be too easy otherwise ;).
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Eeeeeyyyuuuuuukkkk !!!
Couldn't you have told me that this cup was your spittoon !!!
Couldn't you have told me that this cup was your spittoon !!!
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Best wishes to you ! Have a great day.
Thank you for your great blogging. I enjoy your posts very much.
Cheers for Miss C.
Thank you for your great blogging. I enjoy your posts very much.
Cheers for Miss C.
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However I can sympathize with bloggers who work hard and have advertising as a major income source.
However, if you think about it, this business model (with or without ad blockers) is not viable as a long term one. You just can't force anyone to buy something with even a mildly irritating ad. Technology is now, and will progressively more, allow marketers to know precisely what ads generate what revenue (which was not possible in the past). Companies just won't pay for ads that don't generate sales.
Hence I predict that, in the future, blogs will feature ads that will be more ''interesting'' to viewers and may, in some cases, become part of the content (techno blogs already know this). Blogs will also diversify the way they generate income.
Aside from selling merchandise I see more and more blogs compiling their top posts and selling them to their readers for a nominal fee. It allows readers to feel like they're contributing to the longevity of their favourite blogs on a voluntary basis.
With all the serious brain power out there in blog world it's only a matter of time before more robust business models come out and readers don’t' need to feel like thieves for behaving rationally.