The Illusion Of Free Market. An SEO Perspective
I have just finished reading a very interesting research paper dealing with the psychological limitations of the general consumer. The main point of this research paper is to show that the rational buyer theory has some very serious limitations and is only partially correct.
The author, Theo B. C, Poiesz, a professor at the Tilburg University and Tias Business School Netherlands argues that the free market model which in theory stimulates innovation, competition, flexibility and lower prices, but also has distinct disadvantages like short life cycle for a specific product and a continuous need for marketing, tends to be overrated and that the general behavior of a consumer can be determined by a very different set of factors such as the niche filling value (an overcrowded niche does not follow the free market rules), a higher emphasis on the perceived risk of purchase and ignorance when it comes to high tech products.
While this analysis holds some interesting points, it does not cover specifically the world of online marketing. There are no reasons whatsoever though to believe that these factors do not apply to this more restricted domain too.
An even more interesting conclusion can be drawn if we consider the visiting of a certain website as an act of purchase. A visitor spends time while surfing after all and makes decisions based on his values on which sites to visit and which to not. Now this is where things get really interesting, because this analysis reveals that the general rules such as good content attracts readership and innovative features attract attention no longer have the same weight as in traditional marketing models.
Let’s take the niche filling value for example. If a niche is overcrowded it is remarkably difficult to obtain decent traffic, even with exceptional content and features. For the blogging world as example a post on seomoz suggested that about 90% of the traffic from a specific overcrowded niche goes to less than a percent from the number of existing blogs.
As for the perceived risk factor, this can be translated into the reluctance of any visitor to let himself exposed to content which he or she doesn’t believe to be trustworthy.
This leaves us with the ignorance part and given that the online medium is on the forefront of technological innovation, this is a factor that must be taken into account. You will often see that the real innovative content has a lower readership than general, written in layman’s terms content. It can be argued that the common reader will be exposed to this sort of content only when these innovations reach the mainstream and become a de facto online presence.
For further reading:
The research paper by Mr. Poiesz
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