The Influence of Crowd

Before I talk about my topic this week, I want to talk about a very interesting TED talk show shown by my classmate Will Peterson in our class couple weeks ago. His TED talk’s topic is about how to make a movement. In this TED talk, it tells us that a lone person can become a leader when he dances alone in a public circumstance because the first person who acts differently is potentially to make a movement. If other people start imitating the lone guy, they are going to be the followers. As a result, the movement gets started.

From this story, I realize that not only a leader who acts differently can lead a movement, but a group of customers can also make a trend. Because customers usually imitate each other if they see other customers are browsing or purchasing interesting and unique products. A group of customer’s power is probably not as affected as a dancer in particular circumstance, but it can bring much attentions at least.

For example, in my Wilderness Photography class, we were given an assignment that we needed to do some interviews and photograph local farms and farm markets. So we went to a small farm market in Winooski on Sunday couple weeks ago. When we arrived there, there were not much people and a lot of people were just passing through the market. Since we needed to do interviews and take photos, we started to talk to some random farmers. Not a long time after we started doing interviews and taking pictures, a lot of people came to the our tent to check this farm’s products because they thought there must be some interesting products at this tent. However, there was nothing special, but fresh vegetables.

Customers are curious to all products when they want to purchase. The more people at a store, the more attentions it would grab. Even though there is no very unique products, customers still come because they want to take a look and try. So that would be a very good opportunity to build the first relationship with customers. Think about this, when you saw a street performer playing or singing on a street and there is no one watching, would you watch him and stay there for a while? Probably not. Nevertheless, if you saw a street performer playing or singing on a street was surrounded by crowd, you would probably go and watch. What you saw in front of you already tells you that he is performing an interesting show because there were many people.

It is the same when customers shop. When customers saw a store where does not have a lot of people, they would pass and go to the next store. If they saw a lot of people in one store, they would go inside and check because they think those customers who are in the store already experienced the products of this store and the products can be trusted.