3.5 Richer interaction: direct interfacing with shops and services 

3.5.1 Overview 

By and large, exactly which businesses we choose to patronise on a daily basis have very 

little  to  do  with  just  the  name  of  the  business.  If,  for  example,  a  particular  product  is 

cheaper in one shop than in another but otherwise equal in every way, we will go for the 

cheaper option. Our primary concerns as consumers can be summed up by one or more of 

the following criteria: 

  Proximity of vendor: This is what a standard Golden/Yellow Pages directory is used 

to  ascertain.  The  emphasis  of  such  directories  is  to  locate  bricks and mortar 

businesses in close proximity to the user. This is why the six print editions of the Irish 

Golden Pages are distributed according to the six major telephone areas   01, 02, 04, 

05, 06 and 07/09. A resident of Cork (02) does not automatically receive any edition 

other than the 02 each year; this relects the fact that location is still a major deciding 

factor in deciding which business one should pick up the phone and call. 

  Availability: This applies to products in the obvious sense that if a given shop does 

not stock whatever the customer is looking for, the customer will be forced to look 

further afield. With services such as plumbers or doctors, it is a question of time, as in 

who is available at 8pm on a Sunday evening to fix your exploded boiler, or which of 

the doctors` offices in Fermoy are open at the weekend. 

  Value: If there are two supermarkets within easy reach, most consumers will clearly 

opt for that which sells the better value groceries. Assume  value  in this context to 

be some sort of heuristic based on the quality of the goods or service versus the price. 

Different  consumers  clearly  have  different  benchmarks  for  what  constitutes   good 

value ! 

The  current  online  and  print  versions  of  the  Golden  Pages  do  a  perfectly  good  job  of 

providing details related to the existence of and proximity of thousands of businesses in 

Ireland. However, they offer little or no information on the products and services offered 

by those businesses, and no information at all on how one business compares to another 

in terms of value. 

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