Social media, SEO, marketing and writingInternet + Web Effect = The Empowered Consumer
The Internet and its colossal impact on businesses worldwide is something I like to refer to as the Web Effect, a precept that Laurie Windham and I first postulated nine years ago in our book, “Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business.” The Web Effect loosely plays on Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory principle known as The Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly Effect has become a popular metaphor for describing the chaos theory, the notion that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China can send ripples of effects throughout larger and more complex systems, causing say –– a hurricane in Florida.
Following this analogy, the Web is a true “phenomenon” that has impacted nearly everyone. The “complex system” that’s been impacted by the Web is our global economy. Much like the ripples in a pond which repel from a center point and then move outward, the Web effects businesses in ways that cannot be entirely predicted, and that will continue to impact organizations in this unsettling way for many years to come.
The ripples in the Web Effect demonstrate the various stages of impact:
- The Web Effect begins with access. People with access to the Web quickly develop a preference for the Web as a vehicle for performing many business and leisure tasks.
- This access quickly led to preference to do business and expand relationships on the Web in every market.
- As consumers and business customers develop a preference for using the Web, they now demand that all companies service them online.
The result of the Web Effect is that it has created an empowered customer. Control of the transaction has shifted from the seller to the buyer, from the vendor to the customer.
Now that there has been this monumental shift in control to an online user, that control cannot easily be taken away. More than a demand––it can be said that the Web has become a prerequisite to doing business with a company.
