There is a great diversity of opinion about
which the most influential factor is when people make decision. Some people say
that information from magazines or reviews from online communities have the
greatest impact on decision making. However, I personally believe that recommendation
from friends is the most influential for reliability and personalized.
To begin with, recommendation from our
close friends are reliable. We do not need to be suspicious their lie because
we already have credible relationship with our friends. In opposite, in case of
magazine articles or online reviews, we usually have to read with doubt basically
because they are written by someone we do not know. There is possibility that
they do not tell the truth or they create a false review to advertise their business.
For example, when I was a university student, one of my friend did a part-time
work and her mail role was to write positive reviews about her employer. She
was paid when she uploaded an assigned number of reviews in different website.
It means that there might be more and more fake reviews or information in the
internet or magazine.
On top of that, opinion from closer is more
useful and helpful than one from stranger. To be specific, friends know about
yourself. They refer to your personality or interest when they give you some recommendation.
Let me bring my personal experience as an example. Last month, I found a famous
restaurant from a web-based community. It had 5 stars from most of people who
wrote reviews and it seemed very popular among netizen. Before I decided to visit
there, I asked to my friend who have been there before. She said that it is
true that the restaurant is very popular, however, she did not want to
recommend it to me. It was because most of the menu there were spicy and she
knows that I do not enjoy spicy food. It means that friends can give us more useful
and personalized information based on their knowledge about me.
To sum up, I believe that the greatest impact when
we make a choice is recommendation from friends.