By Blake Cronyn | June 7, 2017
I watched a talk by Simon Sinek over the weekend titled “If You Don’t Understand People, You Don’t Understand Business.” In his talk, he says some powerful things about the role that trust plays when making buying decisions. While watching the video, I saw many clear connections between the principles he was teaching and how the rBux system works.
Here’s a summary of an interesting point Simon made:
“Let’s say you want to buy a new television. You do all your research including consumer reports and review websites. You eventually figure out what you are going to buy: you’re getting an LG. It’s the best on the market. That’s what you’ve decided on.
That Friday night, you go over to your friend’s house. The gadget guy – the guy who has the first of everything. You go to him with all your research and you say, “I’m getting the new LG…”
…and he says, “Nah man, get the Sony, it’s so much better.” In that one instant, he’s completely turned all of your research on its head and now you want to buy a Sony. All that marketing and research goes down the drain; it doesn’t matter. Because the person that you trust – the person from within your community – told you that you should get the Sony.
You trust him. You deeply believe that he knows what he is talking about. He must be right. And you buy based on trust.
Conversely, if we ask a stranger what TV to get, we will probably not listen to their input because we don’t trust everyone. We trust people from within our community…”
Simon’s video spoke strongly to me because his ideas get at the core of the rBux philosophy: we trust our friends and we listen to them when making purchasing decisions. In fact, the rBux platform enables people exactly like “the gadget guy” to monetize their influence and knowledge by referring products to people in their network.
But it works both ways, gadget guy needs prospective buyers to share his knowledge with.
Ultimately, rBux is a place where members can leverage their trusted relationships for mutual advantage: on the one hand, to monetize their product knowledge and on the other, to make better, faster, and more reliable buying decisions.
rBux empowers members to interact with friends, share products, request product advice, and find new products. According to Simon, marketing and research cannot compete with trusted advice from a knowledgeable friend. rBux knows this and that’s why we’ve made buying social, interactive and easy! With this in mind, it’s easy to see that rBux is not just a platform, it’s the future of shopping.
