We are all familiar with all the various bidding sites that are out there that bring consumer and seller together such as the highly popular website Priceline.com and of course its now defunct name your price grocery website WebHouse (which I sadly miss). Of course there are other variations of sites that look to capture an audience by allowing various businesses to compete for your business such as with Lending Tree and RentalCars.com (owned by Priceline). As more and more consumers are always looking for the best deals, a new trend has been emerging that Doc Searls dubbed last year as the Intention Economy.
The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them. The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don't need marketing to make Intention Markets.---Doc Searls”
With this idea in mind, it opens another market and another way for brands to think outside of the box when it comes to getting exposure for their product. This is a market that is virtually untapped and one that many are beginning to see as a golden opportunity to connect in another way with their target market. One such example is in a specific part of the travel industry: cruises. Cruise Compete is a website that is similar in notion to Lending Tree in that Travel Cruise Agents compete to offer you the best deal on a cruise package. Although sites like Lending Tree, Priceline and Cruise Compete work with a limited amount of businesses to offer you the best deal, these sites still remain popular in this niche of price competition and continue to have a small amount of rival sites.
Yet another promising emerging trend in the Intention Economy are the websites based around potential buyer’s bidding for your product or service before it is even up for sale. This is another way to tell a potential seller just how much their product/service is in demand that puts the buyer at the forefront creating the demand before there is even “supply” to fight for. Such sites as Igglo, where buyer’s can “pre-order” a house even if it is not up for sale and Make Me Move, which allows a seller to post their property not yet for sale to see if there is a demand from buyer’s for it. Maybe you are a musician and wonder if there is a demand for your band to tour particular cities around the globe, then Eventful is where you want to look, as your fans post their intentions for a concert by your band in their city. Low demand—you bypass, but high demand tells you to speak to your booking agent to look into it for you.
The Intention Economy offers a new way of convenience. Buyers don’t have to scour the web to find the best deals and sellers know if they have a product or service they offer that is in demand and where that demand lies. It’s the best of both worlds really.
For more great trends, be sure to check out the April Edition of TrendWatching.com’s Trend Briefing.
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