It has been an interesting learning experience so far reading my classmates’ posts and commenting on them ( @Simon’s blog and @Xiu Zhen’s blog ).
There are two posts that got me thinking about “Visitors” and “Residents” in business / marketing context. The first one was Vanessa’s post where she mentioned about being able to identify who are the “Visitors” and “Residents” of your target audience. She also gave an example of how a retail business ASOS.com created a virtual marketplace where independent labels could sell and interact with their customers, and that the marketplace forces consumers to get on the internet and talk. She suggests that ASOS.com has successfully indirectly create online communities that has changed their customer behaviors from being a visitor to a resident.
Whether ASOS.com did really incite change in their customer behaviors is up for debate. Tor pointed out in his comment to Vanessa’s post that a “Visitor” could just visit the site, make a purchase, leave and only return when the need arises again. He ended his comment with a thought provoking question: “what do you think could be a strong reason for a “Visitor” to change to a “Resident”?” That question could be partially answered by Simon’s post, where he talks about Homer and Kahle’s value-attitude-behaviour hierarchy (1988).
Are they any relationships between the type of content, product or service a “Visitor” would prefer compared to a “Resident”?
As marketers, are we able to influence the opinions, attitudes and beliefs of our target audience in such a way that we could constantly change where they stand in the spectrum of Visitors to Residents, to align them to whatever we are selling and elicit a purchase response?
More questions that i do not have answers to !
isaaclye 