Are we all "nudniks".

[drron]

An interesting article from View from the Wing.
"Nudniks are those who call to complain, speak with managers, post online reviews, and file lawsuits. Typified by an idiosyncratic utility function and personality traits, nudniks pursue action where most consumers remain passive. Although derided in courtrooms and the court of public opinion, we show that nudniks can solve consumer collective action problems, thereby leading to broad market improvements.


Second, the Article spotlights a disconcerting development: Sellers’ growing usage of Big Data and predictive analytics allows them to identify specific consumers as potential nudniks and avoid selling to or disarm them before they can draw attention to sellers’ misconduct. The Article therefore captures an understudied problem with Big Data tools: sellers can use these tools to shield themselves from market accountability."

Does This New Law Review Article Sound Like It's Describing Your Life? - View from the Wing

This new paper forthcoming in Vanderbilt Law Review sure sounds familiar to me.

viewfromthewing.com

 

[kookaburra75]

An interesting read. On one hand social media has given the nudniks a voice, but then on the other hand the sellers are using data analysis and their manipulation to social media to slicence them. Social media giveth and then takes away.

The best bit was the definition of a nudnik (p7)
Nudniks also differ from other active consumers, in that their activism does not come from shopping for the best deal ex-ante but rather from demanding that their transactional expectations will be met ex-post

I couldn't but help but smile a bit. Some of the posts we see on AFF about one airline or the other seem to focus on what the person 'expected' should happen, not what is documented ot advertised by the airline. Are we all 'nudniks' to some degree? Or maybe the bigger qustion would be, if nudnik is an acronym, what is the definition?

 

[harvyk]

Need to take this with a grain of salt, this is a US article and US consumer protections can basically be summed up as caveat emptor.