There has been a lot written lately about crowd sourcing. How companies can use social media tools to get the best ideas from their staff, share knowledge, collaborate better and foster team working. Where crowd sourcing is also interesting is in the area of sharing pricing information. Take a look at GasBuddy.com, which is a web site that compiles petrol prices in the US and Canada. Volunteers text or go online and enter prices at fuel stations in their area. The volunteer site creates a price map which can be accessed online or through a mobile phone.
This just shows how internet technologies and mobiles are going to shift more power towards consumers and away from sellers as people start to work together to compare prices on goods and services. Armed with this information, we could eventually see shifts in consumer retail shopping trends and behaviour.
www.itsopen.co.uk
