By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

In the age of ubiquitous blogs and product-review sites, online reputation plays a vital role in convincing consumers to push forward with a purchase.

This has companies increasingly embracing bloggers for their potential as effective marketing tools.

SK Marketing & Company, the online shopping and retail marketing arm of the SK Group, recently launched consumer review site I-Prosumer (www.iprosumer.co.kr), which intends to become a one-stop destination for blogger reviews.

The Web site may find little trouble in sourcing content, as a growing number of companies, looking to benefit from word-of-mouth endorsement, are handing out their products to popular bloggers and other willing consumers in exchange for online exposure.

The companies that agree to publish the product reviews on I-Prosumer will receive a report analyzing the articles and other data collected by the Web sites, SK officials said.

"Consumers, through their acquired power from the Internet, are now having more influence on how a product is conceived, designed and reaches shelves," said an official from SK Marketing & Company's communication business team.

"We can call the consumers of today as 'trysumers' and 'salesumers,' as they are involved from testing and evaluating products to marketing."

The SK Group has already been operating an online review site through Web portal Nate, operated by its Internet unit, SK Communications.

Nate Review (review.nate.com) is run more like a media site, enabling users to review the latest consumer products and also books, movies, television shows and other entertainment contents.

Perhaps, I-Prosumer can find a reference case in Soviza (www.soviza.com), one of the more popular of the slew of product-review Web sites that are flooding the Internet.

Soviza has a similar business model to I-Prosumer, recruiting bloggers on behalf of companies looking to generate online buzz.

The Web site has more than 32,000 members, who receive a variety of benefits by participating in the product reviews or posting articles on their blogs and online community sites.

Wizwid (www.wizwid.com), a popular online shopping service for fashion items, runs a separate Web site called Revu (www.revu.co.kr), which allows buyers to post reviews on their latest purchases.

Although the bloggers are getting more involved in the marketing activities of companies, skeptics wonder whether online product reviews can be relevant and credible and whether the authors are offered freebies.

Some Web sites have also been criticized for paying bloggers for their articles.

However, there are also observations that such changes are inevitable as blogging becomes mainstream, and seen as a medium for companies to get corporate messages across to the public.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr