Re-IntermediatioN
The first wave of the commercial web in the nineties and noughties was all about ‘disintermediation’.
It was one of those big words that I loved to bandy about as a young professional to make me seem smarter. By cutting out the middleman and selling or buying direct, you could get things cheaper and faster. It was a horror show for retailers and distributors who found brands suddenly chasing their loyal customers, or new entrants bypassing all of the traditional layers of the retail supply chain.
Disintermediation had its advantages. Not only was it cheaper for the buyer, it was cheaper for the seller too. Building a direct relationship may be expensive but in the long term it pays off in terms of your margins. Your control. And your potential ‘stickiness’: if you own the relationship, you’re never going to see your prized spot in the supermarket aisle handed over to a competitor.
Price isn’t everything
The problem with disintermediation though, is that sometimes the middle men and women add value, not just cost. For the brand they add reach, knowledge, and customer service. And for the consumer they do something even more important: they help us to navigate complex choices.
Sometimes they do this through curation, limiting our choices only to those brands that they trust and value - or that they have the most profitable relationship with. In some ways the reasons for that curation don’t matter to us as a consumer. Overwhelmed by the myriad options available in age of high frequency change, we welcome direction.
Sometimes intermediaries help us through comparison, giving us tools to narrow down our options for ourselves. Just look at the success of comparison sites, for example. In a market flooded with complex choices, these sites give us the tools to choose, even if we first have to choose between the comparison sites.
The third way that intermediaries help is through expert advice. Have you ever bought a hi-fi from a proper hi-fi store, where the person serving you is a real nerd who has tried everything and knows the strengths and weaknesses of each component? Or bought a posh dress with the help of a really great shop assistant? You might end up spending more, but you feel great about the purchase because you know that it’s right.
What’s the big idea?
We need help to navigate the morass of modern media and consumer choice. That has resulted in the return of many traditional classes of intermediary, and the invention of new ones. Some are human, some are less so.
Take housing, for example. The number of estate agents in the UK has been booming over the last decade, increasing by nearly 50% between 2015 and 2024. Or travel, with the very human travel agents of Travel Counsellors seeing year on year growth and topping a billion in sales in 2024.
How about influencers? We might like to laugh at them but the clue is in the name: influencers are popular because they help us to discover products, make choices, understand what is desirable and confers status. And there are lots of types of influencers. They might steer your taste in everything from music, to fashion, to food, to paint.
Then of course there’s the robots. AI. Discovery engines and algorithms to personalise your TV choices, program your playlists, or show you the items you’re most likely to buy up front on a website.
Why does it matter?
Intermediation is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Powerful intermediaries can be vehicles for trust, or misinformation. They can make or break anything from a pop single to a political party. Whether it’s an influencer, an editor, or an algorithm, we need to pay attention to the mechanisms by which we are guided and make our choices.