Country: USA, CA- San Mateo

Market Sector: Consumer Generated Media

Consumer generated media (CGM) describes a variety of new sources of online content that is created, initiated, shared, circulated and used by consumers. Also called online incidental word of mouth (iWOM), CGM is owned and controlled by consumers, and it often carries far higher credibility and trust than traditional media, especially as media channels become more fragmented and less trusted. The growth of its influence poses challenges and opportunities for marketers, companies.

Before the Internet, word-of-mouth behavior was pretty much that-behaviors and experiences shared verbally with others. Consumers have always shared information one-on-one or in small groups. They exchange stories of products, shopping experiences, politics, sports, recommendations, jokes, etc. They communicate individually or in small groups on the phone, over the backyard fence, at the shopping malls, sporting events, or at the water cooler at work.

The Internet has transformed this unsolicited, unfiltered, word-of-mouth behavior into a broadcast-like ability to communicate with the masses. CGM is a web-enabled WOM and is transforming industries such as travel, real estate, shopping, auto purchasing, human resources, news reporting, customer service and call centers, and affecting virtually every consumer vertical. Consumers continue to have enhanced search capability thanks to Google, Yahoo, Snap, and others which give the ability and freedom to search for text, image, video, etc.

Innovation in CGM now includes the ability to search, post and send photos, video clips (vlogs), audio clips, web logs (blogs), and text messages to an internet aware global consumer base. The participating users have encouraged the formation of specialized consumer to consumer communities surrounding various industries. This has been widely viewed as a market opportunity by corporate marketers to capture this measurable information and opinion which would enable the consumer to become more involved in the building and maintenance of a community. This shaping of consumer purchase behavior is developing to a large extent without the interference of a company therefore building company-independent brand trust and in some cases, eroding it. The fast growing Internet based CGM community now erodes the audience pool, impact and reach of traditional advertising media-TV, radio, print advertising.

 CGM