The age of trust, feel good factor and the peer to peer market place

The other day as I was walking through the aisles in our local Whole foods market, I couldn’t help but wonder why it was so crowded. Immediate thoughts were justifications on day of the Week and seasonal shopping trends.

But then I started comparing my experience at another local grocery store almost similar day of the Week and Season. That thought process spiraled into some deep thinking, which inspired this blog post.

It was clear there was a sharp contrast between the two. One was less crowded and the racks had less stock. Why would one retailer do well than the other.

The age old differentiator, money or price does not apply here. Whole foods is way more expensive. Then why would people crowd a market where items are pricier.

It may be better customer service, Whole foods has baggers at each counter while many retailers now send you to self checkout. But then I thought , I do like self checkout except for the times when you get stuck for authorization, its easy and quick.

It’s not convenience, other shops are closer than Whole foods. Some even bundle cheap gas for shoppers with reward points which becomes attractive when you spend a lot at that store.

So what would be that key differentiator.

The answers arrive once you start thinking about the new shift in the marketplace where price and convenience are being overtaken by values that cater to “the you” in the shopper. In other words what feels good to you, what makes you healthy, what you trust and feel comfortable associating yourself with or paying for. I could call this new shopper the emotional shopper, but that would limit the surface area. I would rather call her the self focused shopper. The focus is on the self rather on a budget or convenience factors.

There are so many such contrasting trends even in the items that are being shopped. Lets take a look at couple of them

Let’s take juices for example, cold pressed, not pasteurized and refrigeration required juices are preferred over the usual long shelf life products. It once made sense to buy stuff that do not take up fridge space and also have longer shelf life. But then, more shelf life also means you are in some way moving away from nature, nature does not give you that long shelf life. So some thing in there is not good for you or at the least is not good enough for you. So these fresh juices that are way more pricier than the others are being preferred.

There are many categories of labeling eggs, Organic, free range etc. Makes you wonder when there were just a few farmers in a village, people bought direct or had your own supply of eggs in your farm. Then as demand increased, industrialization sacrificed one value after another for scale and margins. These values are now being returned to products with specially marked labels.

So it’s clear simple, cheap commodity product or marketplace is not good enough for you.

Now that we have established that, I want to bring your attention to how these trends are changing the landscape of peer to peer marketplace. P2P marketplace is not new. Like the eggs that were sold by farmers in a small village , its very old. Then we had the onset of industrialization and the internet and e-commerce and we have so many ways you can buy or sell today. But just like the product quality that was sacrificed for scale and margins , the experience , trust and security was sacrificed too especially in large scale p2p marketplaces. It has easily become the breeding ground for scammers. There are fraud protection and other measures, but have you ever considered for every fraud charge revoked , who actually pays that money, its most probably the company which didn’t have the measure to stop it in the first place and has much more to loose in name and brand value. So needless to say current fraud prevention is more a bandage than a solution.

Let’s review the experience in a p2p marketplace say buying/selling used phones for example. Every year there is a new phone model and you can just buy one. But then your old phone is lying waste and you dont know what to do with it. The most financial sense is to sell it. But then it’s not that easy. You can trade in, but you know no big companies are going to give you the right value. After all they are used to charging you for all they do and don’t do in terms of efficiency.

So you start looking for ways to sell your phone and you find its not as easy as buying. How come when you are the buyer there are so many options but not when you are an individual seller. You don’t know what price to quote and if you can ship before payment or how you verify payment settles before shipping.

The other side of this equation is not easy either, as a buyer from an individual seller you dont know if you can trust, if you can pay in advance of receipt and still expect it arrives as promised.

It makes sense to expect that if you buy / sell peer to peer on a larger marketplace you tend to be covered after all these companies are big and trusted right?. Wrong!. That is where scammers breed. And as this article points just being your bank or your regular online marketplace transaction does not guarantee its safe and secure.

So what would be a good solution and where is the connection to feel good factor and human social interaction. The answer comes from some of the recent advances in the C2C (consumer to consumer) market. Some companies found intuitive ways to crowd source human interaction and task management by connecting crowd to crowd. Some well known examples are Uber, Lyft, Doordash etc. We had this solution all along as pointed out it was what was keeping the village economy moving, but in the urban village where connections are sparse, these companies found ways to connect one citizen to another in a rather convenient way using their mobile phones.

So wouldn’t it be greatly useful if some company can connect a seller and a buyer in a p2p market but come in the middle as a moderator, a connector that makes the transaction convenient, secure and trusted. This converts a p2p market into a c2c market.

There are several such new and intuitive companies that are connecting crowd to crowd, making transactions simple, secure and trusted. Some operate in p2p marketplace like Vendiapp , some do p2p delivery service like Peyk.

Just as we know from the grocery store example, with scale and commoditization you loose quality and lost values, then you need to bring those back with re labeling. Similarly p2p in larger marketplaces lost some values and these fresh incumbents are bringing back those values.

So what used to be good with a larger marketplace, a better shipping and handling and so called guarantees and fraud protection are now replaced by intuitive and well connected local crowd to crowd transactions with moderation. Fraud protection is guaranteed because there is almost no chance for fraud, its human verified. But still service speed is accelerated because there are no big pipe lines and processing, it’s simple local and crowd connected.

What makes this all possible, are the new advancements in mobile based economy, a population that is accustomed to mobile and internet use and some very good software that connects people. But this is just the beginning , we are in the next Industrial revolution where Artificial intelligence is slowly changing all landscapes.

What looks great with software will look magical when AI driven advancements start appearing in these marketplace, what shall those be is better covered in a future blog!.

For now let’s just notice the marketplace changing, the refocus on “the you” in the seller/buyer. It is a great time to be.