In a world where pay, pensions and bonuses dominate the headlines, it encourages me that people are still prepared to offer so much of their time for free. Even though we expect to get paid by our employers, we don't put a monetary value on time spent on our personal relationships: we don't bill the ironing or the cooking; we do jobs for family and friends for which we would charge strangers; we do charitable work.
Somewhere along the line, we decide that some of our activities must be paid for. In a way this makes of what previously must have been bartering. You might argue that these paid-for activities are the things we don't really want to do but that isn't always true as clearly many people enjoy their paid work (and say they would do it for nothing). Some people even turn their hobbies into paid work. It's not even that simple because the other side of the coin is that some people do things for free for family but really resent it.
All of which leads me to the interesting way in which a whole worldwide web community is happy to share their experiences of products and services with strangers for no monetary gain. Many send reviews to sites like Internet Movie Database or Whatsonstage. I myself am a member of the Web Of Trust which is an add-on for the Firefox browser. Members rate sites as trustworthy or otherwise and I find this very useful when I'm thinking of buying from an unknown supplier. What it shows is that most of us are social beings with an idea that we benefit from a system of indirect mutual support. The formal version of this might be paying taxes for, say, education.
In today's retail world, customer reviews, freely given, are very important. Even critical comments are good because they validate the praise. Customers are much more likely to buy if others have been impressed by the product. The Your Life Your Style website offers the opportunity for our customers to comment. They need to be encouraged with a follow up email and a click link but the investment is worth it.
