Global Trend

Real vs. Cyber Becomes the Basis of Lifestyle Choices

Amazon has revolutionized the way people buy books, Google has transformed the way people search for information, and eBay has changed the way people buy and sell items that used to be sold at yard sales.

Those business models were all based on convenience. The Internet’s strength is its ability to give people access to a wealth of information. If you’re looking for a Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser or a first edition of Catcher in the Rye, the Web is the most efficient way to search and compare without having to travel to thousands of locations.

But the Internet falls short in other areas. Consider the growing disenchantment with on-line dating, which has led an increasing number of people to abandon dating sites for old-fashioned blind dates arranged by friends.

Web sites such as Match.com and Yahoo Personals give singles a way to narrow the list of options by entering highly specific search criteria and then generating a list of people who meet those criteria, such as female, divorced, no children, blue eyes, brown hair, slender, advanced degree, and so on.

Internet dating and personals generated $245.2 million in the first half of 2005, according to The Paid Content U.S. Market Spending Report conducted by comScore Networks for The Online Publishers Association. However, for the first time in several years, the category lost its top spot among paid content categories, falling behind Entertainment/Lifestyles content.

As veterans of the Internet dating world have discovered, the advantage that the Internet offers in helping people find each other is also its drawback. Because people can often find literally thousands of others who fit their criteria, Internet dating encourages daters to keep looking for a better match instead of settling down.

Even members of Generation X, who grew up with technology, are rejecting it as a way to find dates and long-term mates. “Many GenXers have a romantic notion of meeting someone and falling in love, and many feel the on-line [approach] feels contrived and less romantic,” according to Jillian Straus, author of the book Unhooked Generation. For them, blind dates arranged by friends feel more natural and more likely to lead to a long-term relationship.

Also, the anonymity of the Internet gives some people the license to be rude. They can walk out in the middle of a first date, or end relationships by simply not responding to further e-mails, without offering the courtesy of a message to say they’re no longer interested. This isn’t the case with traditional blind dates arranged by a mutual friend in the real world: People tend to be more polite when they have to answer to a friend who will hold them accountable for their behavior.

Besides politeness, another casualty of Internet dating is honesty. When people post their profiles on-line, they can pretend to be younger, thinner, or taller than they really are. They can pretend to earn a six-figure income when they are working for minimum wage, or not working at all. Married people can pretend to be single, parents can pretend to be childless, and males can pretend to be females.

For all these reasons, there’s a growing backlash against Internet dating. Citing “on-line dating fatigue,” singles are once again asking friends to set them up with people they know. “Matchmaking by friends or family carries the most potential for establishing a relationship on the one hand, and maintaining dignity on the other,” reports USA Today. The newspaper quotes one disgruntled on-line dating veteran who found that with old-fashioned blind dates, “At least you know that if they tell you he’s a Delta Airlines pilot, he is a Delta Airlines pilot, not some guy working at the Avis rental counter.”

The problem with on-line profiles is that there is no way to verify the truth, because each user posts his or her own description. The descriptions often veer so dramatically from reality that the linguistic journal Maledicta recently published an article titled, “How to Decipher Personals Ads.”4

According to its translation guide, a woman who calls herself “40-ish” is actually 49. If she says she’s “adventurous,” she’s “slept with everybody.” If she’s “average looking,” she has “a face like a basset hound,” and if she “wants [a] soul mate,” she’s really “a stalker.” For men who post profiles on on-line dating sites, “40-ish” means “52 and looking for a 25-year-old,” “athletic” means “watches a lot of NASCAR,” and “mature” translates to “older than your father.”

The pitfalls of Internet dating suggest that companies can’t expect to succeed with every business model as they move human activities on-line. Some activities, such as shopping for books, will be better on the Internet, while others, such as searching for a spouse, will be worse.

The message for established companies and entrepreneurs is that there will still be plenty of room for non-cyber solutions in many areas of life. For example, shopping for automobiles on the Internet is only practical up to a point.

Web sites like Cars.com can help you to compare different vehicle models and narrow your choices. Once you know which car you want to buy, Web sites can help you find the best price. But there’s still no virtual substitute for taking a car for a test drive. To know how its engine sounds, how well the car handles, how quickly it accelerates, how the interior feels and smells, how the stereo sounds, how much leg room it offers, and all of the other factors that influence a car purchase, you have to experience the car first-hand, in the real world, on the road.

House hunting on the Internet is just as limited. Realtors’ Web sites allow buyers to enter their criteria to search the MLS database. You can quickly find a list of four-bedroom houses with three-car garages with swimming pools in any ZIP code. But again, even when an on-line “virtual tour” of a house is available, you can’t decide if the house is right without experiencing it in the real world by walking through it.

Based on this growing push-back to Internet services, we offer the following four forecasts:

First, Web sites that help users find out the truth behind Internet dating profiles can tap into a lucrative market opportunity. One emerging success story is Truedater.com, where people can register for free and then post reviews of the people they’ve met on such dating sites as Match.com, Nerve.com, and Yahoo Personals. It’s similar to the feedback that buyers and sellers post about each other once they’ve completed a transaction at eBay. This means that anyone who claims to have an “athletic” physique won’t fool anyone for long. One woman who dated someone who goes by the user name of Bill1852 describes him as having a “very middle-aged body topped with a fat balding head.” A man who dated Emiss2004 outed her as “an escort who will con you out of cash for her ‘tuition.’” Truedater started in February 2005, and within the first nine months it had been visited by 1 million people, according to The Chicago Tribune. To generate revenue, sites like Truedater will either have to switch to paid memberships or sell advertising.

Second, expect legislators to make attempts to protect people from sexual predators who join Internet dating sites. As a first step, Michigan and other states have considered passing laws that would require on-line dating sites to notify users whether they have performed criminal background checks on customers. And sites that do run background checks will gain an edge as daters become increasingly cautious about setting up meetings with strangers they’ve met on-line.

Third, bricks-and-mortar retailing will continue to thrive, despite the convenience and growing acceptance of Internet shopping. Forrester Research predicts that U.S. on-line retail sales will more than double between 2004 and 2010, reaching $316 billion by the end of the decade. E-commerce will account for 12 percent of total retail sales in 2010, up from 7 percent in 2004. Consumers will become more comfortable purchasing products such as tools, garden supplies, and flowers on-line. However, that means that 88 percent of retail sales will not take place on-line, but at conventional stores, where consumers can handle the merchandise and talk to salespeople. This helps to explain why the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the fastest-growing occupation will be “retail salesperson,” which will increase by 736,000 jobs by 2014.

Fourth, even within very specific product categories, marketers will find that shopping on the Internet only appeals to certain target customers, and not to others. Consider shopping for jewelry. Blue Nile, an on-line jewelry store, focuses on a target market of highly educated young males who are willing to spend thousands of dollars to buy an engagement ring on-line. In an interview with Red Herring, Blue Nile’s founder, Mark Vadon, admitted that his business model doesn’t appeal to female jewelry shoppers. “Women want to see how a bracelet feels, [or] where the necklace falls,” which they can’t do on-line. In other words ? just as they’ve learned from Internet dating ? there’s too great of a risk that what shows up at their door will be much less attractive than the picture they saw on-line.

References List :
1. To access “The Paid Content U.S. Market Spending Report” covering the first half of 2005, visit the Online Publishers Associations website at:www.online-publishers.org/pdf/paid_content_report_oct05.pdf 2. Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why Were Still Single by Jillian Straus is published by Hyperion. ⓒ Copyright 2006 by Jillian Straus. All rights reserved. 3. USA Today, December 12, 2005, “Blind Dating Gets Back in the Game,” by Olivia Barker. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by USA Today, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All rights reserved. 4. To access the report “How to Decipher Personal Ads,” visit the TravellersPoint website at:www.travellerspoint.com/forum.cfm?thread=10013 5. Chicago Tribune, October 16, 2005, “Dating Site Exposes the Whole Truth,” by Phil Kloer. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by the Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved. 6. To access Forrester Researchs online retail sales projections, visit their website at:www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,937,00.html 7. For information on job growth and opportunity, visit the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website at:www.bls.gov/emp/emptab3.htm 8. Red Herring, December 10, 2005, “Blue Nile Takes on Tiffany.” ⓒ Copyright 2005 by Red Herring, Inc. All rights reserved.