So you’re in the market for a new digital camera. You open the newspaper and there it is: your dream camera with full technical details except for: THE PRICE! Some Jordanian retailers just can’t help it. They have to hide the price so that you have to call (or better, visit) their sales people (“er, no sir we don’t carry this camera.. What? you saw it in our ad. Hang on sir. Beep beep beep. Yes sir we have advertised that camera. The price? Well, er, wait on the line. Beep beep beep. Sorry sir, but my colleague who has the prices is not on his desk right now, can you call tomorrow? Ahlaw-sahla sir!)”
Why is it that I can go to the internet, log onto a price comparison site like MySimon.com and get the price of that item from a zillion sources, while here in Jordan, getting the price can a testing experience?!
OK I forgot about that camera. I have more important things to do, like recommending a management consultant to a friend who needs to restructure his company. Happily, I find site that lists a number of respectable consultants’ web sites. Unhappily, the first two links I chose to click didn’t work (one of which was the Jordanian site of an international consulting giant). Then one worked. I had to go through a long flashy looking animation (no option to skip it). When I finally arrived at the home page, I started looking for the name of a real person with whom I could talk. Nowhere on the site could I find the name of the chief of that company or any of his employees!
What do these two stories have in common? That many companies in Jordan are obsessed with hiding information. The thinking goes: “let’s hide the price so that the competition doesn’t find out for how much we’re selling this item” and “let’s hide our employee names, lest someone decides to head-hunt them off our web site”. Another line of thinking goes “if we put our employee names on our web site, the Social Security Department and the Income Tax people will come breathing down our neck.”
Such thinking is totally incompatible with the ‘truth economy’, brought about by the net. Granted, a lot of business in the world is still done under the table and behind closed doors. But the net brings more and more transparency as information flows in all directions. Want to know what your old laptop is worth? Just go to ebay.com and type in its name and you’ll find out for how much similar items where sold in an open auction environment. Want to read car reviews by impartial consumers? Search on Google.
On the net, the competition and you are a click away from each other. People want to use the net to get information that helps the make buying decisions. They might browse your site then buy from another. Still, chances are that companies who are forthcoming with pricing, specifications, as well with specific corporate information (not just propaganda blabber) have a better chance at building connections with customers.