Yabbly  is a new community-based question and answer Website and app  which allows consumers to receive feedback on potential purchases from others who have recently been in the same situation.   A consumer can ask a question from the general community and Yabbly will then match the questioner with others who have recently made similar decisions.

This Website has the potential to be another tool in the quickly expanding consumer-shopping toolbox and as a result, brands will have to work even harder to get their message across.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3002609/buy-or-not-buy-yabbly-ask-someone-whos-been-there-bought

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For the past few years, we have written about the ways in which consumers have gained control over their shopping experience, and one of the results of that control is the beginning of the end of the big-box era  (see, “The Consumer in Control Goes Shopping” http://www.inferentialfocus.com/our-discipline/current-topics/).

Walmart, for one, appears to realize that, if it wants to remain a retailing power in this new environment, it will need to improve the shopping experience for its customers, both online and in the stores.

The company has built a new search engine from scratch in order to better help customers find what they are looking for. Walmart is managing its own search in-house, in a similar manner to online competitors Amazon.com and eBay, but in opposition to its conventional brick-and-mortar peers that mostly outsource their search technology. Walmart’s new semantic-search engine technology, named Polaris, includes something it once called the “Social Genome” – a way of enabling discovery using algorithms that rank results via social signals from around the web. Walmart claims the new search engine will increase by 10 to 15 percent the likelihood that customers will complete their purchase.
Walmart has also begun testing an iPhone-based self-checkout system in one of its Arkansas stores, making it the second major retailer (aside from Apple) to try such a system.

 
Over the past few years Walmart has purchased small technology companies such as Kosmix, OneRiot and Small Society and combined them to create WalMart Labs, which the company is using for digital innovation.  Walmart’s low prices will still be a draw for many consumers, but in an era where consumers also value simplicity and experience, it won’t be enough.  We expect Walmart to continue to aggressively address the digital side of the retailing experience, and for others big-box retailers to follow suit.

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This reassessment of how humans are relating to devices that connect them to the Internet comes at a time when the equities market has turned away from Facebook stock. Even the director of the executive offices at Facebook is encouraging people to turn off their screens.  People, he has noted, “need to notice the effect that time online has on your performance and relationships.” Reactions are surfacing elsewhere. For instance, the football coach at Florida State University now requires that all players disconnect from Twitter for the entire season. “It’s a distraction,” he observed.

In essence, society seems to be entering an era in which all things Internet are undergoing a revaluation.  “We’re done with this honeymoon phase,” explains Soren Gordhamer, who in 2010 started organizing an annual conference called Wisdom 2.0, which encourages the pursuit of balance in the digital age. “And now we’re in this phase that says, ‘Wow, what have we done?’”

We expect the Internet and entities connected to it will increasingly come under scrutiny, as digital technology joins the wide-ranging reassessment process we have called “Rethinking Everything.”

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