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Buyer - Change We Need

What is a buyer ?


In short, this is the place where shops bargain for buyers.

A little more detail: at the Buyer, a person who wants to buy electronics, telephone, household, office and other equipment, says WHAT he wants to buy, WHERE and WHEN you need to bring a purchase, and stores that can fulfill these conditions make him their offers by competing among themselves for the right to sell him the goods.

Well, to tell even more detail, you need a lot more letters and pictures;).
')
( Disclaimer for those who do not like to read long articles: reading this material may affect the silkiness of your hair ).

So, on Tuesday, November 25th at 23:58 we launched the Purchaser. Until today, we ran in service on our orders, as well as orders from our friends and acquaintances. But now it is time to talk about him and other people;).

A brief historical excursion

(those who are not interested in the history of the emergence of the Buyer, can immediately proceed to the next part)

In March 2006, Doc Searls formulated the concept of “economy of intentions” (Intention Economy). It all comes down to giving the consumer the opportunity to declare their buying intentions, inviting sellers to compete with each other for this transaction:

The economy of intent grows in a truly open market, and not just a cluster of supermarkets. In an economy of intent, customers do not need to rush from shop to shop, like a bee from flower to flower, collecting pollen like information about prices and goods. Economy intentions - this is when the buyer informs the market about their desire to buy, and sellers compete for customer favor. Economy intentions - this is when someone who wants to rent a car can inform the market that: “I am going skiing in Park City from March 20 to 25. I want to rent a 4-wheel drive SUV. I am a member of the Avis Wizard car rental clubs, Budget FastBreak and Hertz 1 Club. I would not want to make a prepayment for gasoline and issue any insurance. Can any of your companies offer me something?:, - and then sellers compete for the right to serve the client.

In February 2007, I did not yet know that Doc Searls introduced the concept of "economics of intentions", but, while thinking about the options for monetizing one project, I came to the same conclusion as he. Why should a buyer — a person who wants to part with his money — have to run from seller to seller to find out who of them has the goods he needs, whether he can deliver it at the time he needs and at the same time calculate how much it will cost him taking into account the delivery, lifting the floor, etc., to find out who is still more profitable to buy?

Initially, the idea of ​​the Purchaser as a place where the buyer can tell the market what he wants to buy and under what conditions, has arisen for another market. But then I ran into the problem of buying a laptop for my wife — I needed a light, with a small screen size, a “female” model (red, pink or blue) with Windows Vista preinstalled, which my wife was used to performance, Bluetooth'om, WiFi, with a good level of battery life and within 30 thousand rubles. It was in the spring of 2007, and there were not very many such models on the market - mostly “female” laptops were either with WinXP, or too large and heavy, or inefficient, or did not fit into the allotted budget.

At first I spent a lot of time trying to find the most suitable model. It turned out to be Samsung Q35 red. Then I spent a lot of time in Yandex.Market to choose a store in which this model really is available. The first ten stores, which I phoned, sorting them out by availability and price, it turns out, tried only to “lure” me with their offers of this laptop at an unrealistically low price - in fact, they did not have the model I needed, and they tried to “fuck” “I needed other laptops that I didn't need.

It may be an effective “marketing move,” but I even in exchange offices, which put out a “enticing” exchange rate, attributing small print “ from 10,000 dollars ”, never change money in principle. When, finally, I found a store that said that they actually have this laptop, it turned out that they could not deliver it to me when it was convenient for me (at that time I came home after 11 pm, and my wife did not I wanted to take the laptop myself, fearing that I would not be able to check for myself whether everything was alright with it). Having stumbled into a couple of stores that stubbornly did not want to bring me a laptop after 20 hours even for extra money, I, exhausted by the process, spat on online stores, and taking half an hour free during the day, drove into the nearest M.Video store and bought him there for 32 thousand rubles.

Naturally, I overpaid for it - in the next couple of weeks after the purchase, I several times saw in the internet an advertisement of this laptop with an offer to buy it for less than 27 thousand rubles. And, of course, I didn’t click through all the offers of the stores in Yandex.Market: I was just beginning to enrage the fact that the stores were so brazenly deceiving me - with information about the availability of goods, about its true price, which they hid in the price of delivery and in the allegations that “laptops from this cheap warehouse will be next week, and now we have them from a more expensive warehouse at such a price” ... Probably, I just didn’t get to normal stores in “Market”. But it became obvious that, as Barack Obama says, we need change. A person who is ready to part with money cannot be forced to perform so many unnecessary actions. You can not make the buying process so uncomfortable. And my partner and I decided to start our service from this market - and we immediately agreed that our project should, unlike the existing price comparison services, stand on the side of the buyer and in every possible way protect his interests.

Until the end of November, we intensively studied the market, thought through the technical and business logic of the service, in mid-December slowly began to communicate with venture capital investors, and in February we agreed on working conditions with the InVenture incubator. Until June 1, 2008, together with the staff of the incubator, we thought through the details of the service and the nuances of its promotion, and in June we began work on the direct creation of the Purchaser. The development of the service was carried out by the company Ontiko Oleg Bunin , and the design was made by the guys from Knock Knock . As a hosting solution, we chose Amazon EC2 .

How does the buyer work?


As mentioned above, the Buyer is a platform through which a person who wants to buy electronics and home appliances can declare his intention to buy a variety of stores that will compete with each other for the right to receive this order. The store, whose offer the buyer chose as the best, gets his contact details and delivers the goods.

It all begins, of course, with the buyer formulating his intention to buy.


The buyer can say what he wants to buy, in three ways. To do this, on the main page of the service, it can:

Opportunities to simply say what I need, without being bothered by the choice of a particular model, I personally lacked. For example, when I buy a cell phone for myself, I hardly need this opportunity - I am well-versed in this category of goods and follow interesting models for me. But when my wife asks me to buy a mixer so that he not only mixes, but also can grind food, including boiled meat for making mashed potatoes for a child, I don’t know what products are in this category and don’t want to waste my time on her study. The same in my case applies to televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers, etc.

I just want to say exactly what I need, describe important characteristics for me in my own words, and let the stores offer me options, while describing the merits of their offers. The store that can better tell me about the advantages of its offer, and also to offer, in my opinion, a reasonable price for this product, will receive my money. In the end, the work of sellers is the ability to sell, and the requirement to thoroughly understand the variety of goods on the market is not mandatory for the buyer. At the same time, let the stores make me offers not only certain models, but also accessories I need for it. Why, when they bring me a DSLR, worth $ 1,000, I have to then go to an offline store to buy a memory card for 350 rubles, which is not included in the package, but without which I can not take pictures? Why not just offer it to me bundled with a camera? And why not to offer me a set of additional knives and any whisk to the mixer, if I need them anyway, but for some reason I don’t know now?

In the next step, the buyer can specify additional requirements for the product. For example, you only want the phone from the official delivery and you can write that the phone you need " must be certified by Rostest ." My partner, for example, cannot stand it when the goods are delivered in their original packaging, from which it can be seen that they have been opened - therefore he indicates that "the original packaging should not be opened ." Some people think that Nokia phones made in Finland are of higher quality than phones made in Nokia’s factories in Southeast Asia - so they can write that “the phone must be made in Finland ”. In general, each has its own requirements for the product, and all of them can be specified in this step. You can not specify anything, but simply press the button to move to the next step.

At this step, the buyer indicates WHERE and WHEN he needs to deliver the goods. You can choose self-pickup, and then you will make offers only shops that have offline points of issue of goods. When you indicate that you need delivery to the address, the address is shown to the stores with the accuracy of the house (that is, the apartment number is not shown). They also see the floor on which to raise the goods, the presence and type of elevator. This is necessary so that shops can accurately calculate the cost of delivering goods to you (including the cost of lifting, say, a refrigerator, to the 8th floor with no freight elevator), because if you order goods with delivery, the shops have to offer you including the full cost of delivery on the terms specified by you. After the buyer chooses one of the offers made to him, the store that made the offer will receive the full delivery address.

Those who want to specify any additional requirements for delivery or courier can click on the link at the bottom of the address input form. For example, you can write there that “the courier must take into account that I will check the goods within 30 minutes and not rush me ” and that “the courier must call one hour before delivery ”. One of the staff of Invenchura indicated that “the courier must be sober ” (apparently, he had a negative experience;)), and experts on the rules of transportation of plasma panels may, for example, write that “ couriers must be warned that they must transport TV strictly upright position . " In general, if you have additional requirements for delivery, you can specify them here, and if not - then, as in the case with additional requirements for the product, you can not specify anything. We tried to make the process of placing an application as simple as possible, but at the same time so that those who like to "confuse" can express all their requirements.

Also in this step you need to specify the desired date and time of delivery. The system itself calculates the most optimal date, but, if desired, it can be changed both upwards and downwards. However, when choosing a too close date, you need to understand that not all stores are able to offer urgent delivery, so the competition for such an application may be less. If you want the goods to be brought to you only on this day and at this time, you need to uncheck the point that “ stores can offer other delivery dates and times if the price is lower ” - otherwise the stores will be able to offer you both delivery time (in any case, the final decision on which of the offers of the stores to accept is yours).

At the last step, the buyer says how he wants to pay, and specifies his contact details (phone, e-mail, his name plus sets the password to enter the personal account and work with his applications). You can choose both a prepayment and a payment after delivery, and in each of these types of payment, the buyer can choose more than one payment method. Accordingly, if you choose to pay by credit card over the Internet, only stores that are able to accept such a payment will make offers. We only relay the person’s intention to buy the market and its conditions, so the buyer from the regions may, of course, choose to pay in cash after delivery, but the likelihood that he will find stores interested in this application is obviously very small.

Stores do not see contact details of buyers. Only after the buyer selects the offer that he likes, they are transferred to the store so that he prepares the delivery and contacts the buyer to clarify the details such as the number of the entrance, the intercom code, etc.

At the end of this step, the buyer sees the page of his order, where he can check all his parameters, change if he has entered something incorrectly, and also print it out or save it in a pdf-file.

After the application is placed, the customer is called back from our call center within 10 minutes in order to clarify its details. For example, if the buyer indicated that he wanted to buy a Canon EOS 450D camera, then he would be asked if he wanted to be offered a camera with a standard lens (Kit) or without it (Body). Also, customers will be asked if they can offer stores with similar models (for example, SLRs of the same level from Nikon or other manufacturers, or, for example, other SLRs from Canon). After the call is completed, the order is activated and becomes visible to the stores.

Then begins the competition of stores for your intention to buy.


In the standard version, bidding on an application lasts 4 business hours (from 10 to 18 Moscow time on workdays). If the application is urgent, then the auction can take place less than 4 hours, as well as take place after hours. Obviously, not all stores have employees working around the clock and on weekends, so, most likely, the competition for such applications will be lower, however, if the buyer wants to make a purchase under such conditions, he has every right to do.

As you remember, in the Buyer, the Buyer may, in his own words, describe what he wants to buy, or indicate the specific model that he needs. In the latter case, two variations are possible: when the buyer wants only this model, and when he allows the stores to offer similar models (for example, the buyer wants a Nikon D60 digital reflex camera, but is ready to consider offers of analogs or even better models, but for about the same price, from Canon, Pentax, etc.). Accordingly, bidding for such bids is slightly different from each other.

In the case where a customer wants, say, the HTC Touch Diamond, and only this model , stores can compete for his bid in two ways:
(all screenshots are clickable)

image image

In that case, if the buyer wants, say, Sony VAIO VGN-SZ450N / C, but said that the stores can offer similar models , then on request just the same price competition for the model, which the buyer originally indicated, on the specified ones conditions, and in “Other offers” stores can offer not only the same model with accessories or modified delivery conditions, but also other models (with or without accessories), describing in the comments the advantages of this offer.

image image

If the buyer did not indicate a specific model, but described what he wants to buy in his own words , then the stores make offers to him with those models that, in their opinion, are best suited to the needs described by the buyer. At the same time in the comments stores can explain to the buyer why this model, in their opinion, is best suited to him.

image image

After the bidding is completed (or before the end of the bidding, if any of the store offers the buyer liked very much and he is sure that no one will make a better offer), the buyer chooses the offer he likes, and his contact details, as well as The delivery address is transferred to the store that won the bid. If the buyer is not impressed by any of the offers, then he has the full right not to accept any of the offers - for this it is enough to click the "Cancel the bid" link.

However, if the buyer did not initially decide on the exact model that he wants to buy, then even having received the offers of the stores, he may be asked which of the offers he has made is better. We have provided a solution to this problem.

A buyer who finds it difficult to make a choice may ask his friends or acquaintances to help him in this. To do this, click on the button "Invite friends to help make a choice", and he will receive a link to the page of his application (people who came to this link will not see the delivery addresses, contact details, and the "Buy" buttons opposite the store offers) which he will be able to post on his blog, on the forum on which he communicates, or send it by e-mail or ICQ to his friends. Those, in turn, will be able to express to the buyer their opinion about which of the proposals, in their opinion, is best - all „Other offers“ are numbered for this. This link can be obtained both when the bidding for the application has not yet ended, and after they are completed - but until such time as the choice has been made. By the way, even after the buyer makes his choice, people following this link will see all store offers.

Here, for example, the link for "help of friends" on the application for HTC Touch Diamond . „ “ Sony VAIO VGN-SZ450N/C . , .

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/45874/

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