Think about the 1950s. UNIVAC 1, the first commercialized computer in the U.S. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I), was introduced. The Mickey Mouse House Club TV show started to air (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mickey_Mouse_Club). Even though you watched TV, life was mostly analogue back then. If you wanted to try a new restaurant, you might’ve read reviews from the paper, but mostly your knowledge of a restaurant consisted of word-of-mouth.
Today, life is easier. You can go to TripAdvisor to see which restaurants are the best. You can also see tons of reviews of hotels online. Word-of-mouth still lives on, but in a different form. Instead of telling your neighbours face-to-face about the restaurant, your opinion can be found online, where a Jere from Finland can make his decision based on your review. In today’s world, news and information spread like wildfire. Even if you have the perfect strategy, it might not be enough if you receive tons of bad reviews online. You can argue, that these reviews are the most important moments of truths along companies touch points. This means, that companies products and services need to be in shape. If they aren’t, you’re in the risk of having a social media slandering, which will affect your whole business!
What’s even better nowadays (for us consumers), word-of-mouth consists of a larger sample size. Thus, you can make your decision based on thousands of reviews, not only on your friends or neighbour’s opinion. Even though technology has made wonderful strides, it has allowed the most basic marketing strategy to blossom. Your product and company have to have a good reputation these days.
Until next week, friends!
Jere’s digital marketing journey 
Great article Jere, I definitely think online reviews are one of the most important moments of truths along companies touchpoints. Personally, I actually find this kind of unfortunate, because I have personally seen a lot of cases of unfair and unwarranted online reviews. Even one low-star review can make a huge difference to a small business’s success, and I’ve heard that review websites are not the best at filtering ‘troll’ content. This article did remind me of something – even though I regularly check reviews, I still rely on the word of mouth from someone that I personally speak to as the most important deciding factor when I’m making a decision. Maybe that’s just my skepticism of online reviews!
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Unwarranted feedback and reviews are maybe the most negative things with word-of-mouth, especially from the point-of-view of businesses. However, I still believe that online reviews are very good, especially when going abroad (because of the limited knowledge). You get to choose your hotel and the attractions based on thousands of reviews, and I personally read 30-50 reviews when choosing a hotel or restaurant, because I’m also a little sceptic about the reviews sometimes. That’s why I feel that a large sample of reviews is a good thing, even for businesses, as you should get an objective view of the product with a lots of reviews.
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