The Business of Selling

Continuing to follow Offer’s lead on the economics, his discussion on selling is particularly informative for considerations of marketing and self-promotion in SNS.

When it comes to selecting a gift, Offer asserts that “gifting and reciprocity need to ascertain the counterparty’s preferences from the outside.” Sites like Amazon try to use such observations to tempt users into purchases from several angles: for instance, by recording the history of their purchases and then displaying similar products; and by showing what other buyers of said products have purchased in addition. SNS can further refine this process by highlighting purchases by members of their social network. However, we would question the condition “from the outside” as it may be that a gift is not in accordance with someone’s preference, but is nevertheless regarded as useful and later perhaps valuable. Are these then hidden or yet to be manifest preferences …?

Offer is also insightful on advertising. Advertisements have been designed to appear personal and encourage craving: “This simulated regard was designed to bypass the filter of reason, in order to create an obligation to purchase in the customer’s mind”. This approach to online advertising is contrary to Sigala’s approach because genuine regard requires conscious consideration. Yet for advertisers the online context is not so straightforward as users are already wary of being bombarded by adverts and many actively dismiss them.

A more substantially relevant phenomenon is the social networking that is used to make sales in people’s homes:

“Tupperware, Avon and Ann Summers recruit women to draw on their social networks and convene house parties, where the conventions of female reciprocity are invited to sell … As information becomes cheaper, marketers attempt to personalise their appeal, and to collect information about individual clients in so-called ‘database marketing’. The goal is to target promotions at the smallest possible market niche, the individual, in order to simulate a personal relationship between the seller and the buyer… cunningly disguised…”

The Challenge of Affluence, Chapter 5, page 92

The costless transaction is now as ever a long way away and Offer indicates a very sizeable proportion of company expenditure on sales people who try to develop a very close personal relationship with their clients and where their clients are busy this often encouraged by the client, itself an indicator of some lack of well-being and quality of relationships that the client possesses.

Personal vs Pseudo-Personal

Offer’s observation about sales and marketing highlights the distinction between what is truly personal and what has only the semblance of being personal, i.e. what may be termed pseudo-personal.

The economy of regard can be very effectively applied to modalities operating in relationships by helping to authenticate the specified relationships between individuals and by providing underlying principles for approximate measurements of maturity in a relationship. In Offer’s paper transactions are characterised as either personal or impersonal; and motivations are described as rooted in desire, desire for regard. There are, however, significant unknowns, especially surrounding the quantification; the incompleteness is acknowledged and illustrated through some examples that imply other motives at work. The scale of unpredictability in human behaviour strongly suggests that these unseen motives are important.

As stated by Offer, personal interaction is a very important source of well-being. In Buddhism there is the concept of kamma-vipaka, which may be regarded both as very personal as it is rooted in intentional actions of the individual (kamma) and impersonal in that the vipaka (fruits arising in dependence on these actions) operate according to universal natural laws. As we can’t control vipaka, the focus is on the actions, especially the intentions behind them.

When it comes to inter-action, a Buddhist view might be that the grant and pursuit of regard reflect certain intentions, but are not necessarily drivers. This view would temper regard in relation to Offer’s list: acknowledgement, attention, acceptance, … , love, friendship,… Here that interaction is driven in part by the grant and pursuit of regard in status, in love, in friendship, etc…

Implications for SNS Implementation

So the consideration of the economy of regard brings to the fore many important aspects that are pertinent to the design of SNS. The various observations here have numerous implications for the design of SNS. In the online context, much effort is concentrated in supporting the user in the creation and development of their personal profiles, information that is eagerly sought by companies. In most current systems this information is made available for impersonal marketing to be tailor-made for the client, but it should be used more to help personal communications.

If we keep in mind the example of sales, the network design should provide more control to individuals over their internal conversations. The system should be sensitive enough to recognise the authenticity of personal communications between those with strong ties within a close circle of friends. When a commercial concern enters that circle it should be treated explicitly as a separate kind of activity with an associate status regarded initially as no more than an acquaintance. It might be most cleanly managed in terms of implementation by another dimension (commercial/business).

Increasing the transparency of business purposes should help guard against underhand and misleading dealings and the hiding of commercial intent. Yet, at the same time, there should be scope for a professional contact to become a genuine friend, subject to appropriate validation. Without such transparency, as Offer relates (p.95), monetary motives make regard suspect and we have instead pseudo regard.

Yet, good business implies and is built on good relationships; entrepreneurship depends on trust. Businesses themselves may evolve in scale from family and small partnerships into large scale industrialisation, which has greater resources than a small personal business. So an SNS should allow relationships to develop smoothly since – as Offer notes (p.97-8) – communication technology has facilitated market growth whilst allowing artisans to prosper again.

A primary goal is to achieve this without compromising the higher ethical values of human relationships. Whilst no system can guarantee appropriate conduct of its members, this kind of architecture based on transparency and separation of concerns should at least help reduce the risk of corruption, in which the social network can be used for harmful, negative ends, within variably adverse long term effects. This is the business counterpart of personal safety, which is discussed in a later section.

One of the key challenges will be – as has always been – the work/life balance; the risk is that increased professional regard could lead to decreased family cohesion. Sigala will need to have some mechanisms that give some approximate measure of regard, but Offer warns us that “regard is difficult to measure” and that “… When making policy, there is an inclination to maximise only what is measurable, thus falling short of real optimality” (p.98). What value can we place of friendship? How about unseen factors such as puñña? To even approach such questions is hard, but we might be more likely to say “this relationship is probably worth more than …” This is a problem for what is broadly termed machine intelligence; such evaluations suggests the use of fuzzy logic, as this discipline has already been applied in neural networks.

Now it’s time to establish economic viability and the business case.