In the September issue of IndustryWeek, I wrote about a trend emerging in the automotive industry: the increasing use of social media to ascertain consumer tastes and preferences.

My hypothesis was that the millions of online comments that consumers make about cars and trucks could become a fundamental input in the R&D process for automakers, and sooner than we think. Ford and Kia showed that they're already incorporating online feedback into their product planning, while other automakers confirmed that it's just a matter of time before the industry gets to that point. Author and consultant Rick Kash, however, asserts that the auto industry's use of social media as an R&D tool is merely a sidebar in a much larger story about supply and demand.

"After 200 to 300 years of a supply-based economy, we are moving to a demand-based economy," says Kash, founder and chairman of the Chicago-based Cambridge Group.

The auto industry is just one of the manufacturing sectors "adding a demand chain," Kash says.

Kash: "Demand is being formed and aggregated in ways that we never would have dreamt possible."

"And what that means is as opposed to starting with supply in the automotive industry and saying, 'Here are the cars we make, it's our best guess, now let's go out and push them,' the entire industry is moving very quickly from a push model to a pull model," he says.

Through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, "demand is being formed and aggregated in ways that we never would have dreamt possible," Kash says.

At the same time, automakers and other manufacturers are becoming "expert" at understanding that demand, Kash says, by using new tools that provide deeper insights into customer demographics and spending habits.

As an example, Kash points to Nielsen's Online Campaign Ratings system, which "measures the true audience of an online ad campaign by combining Nielsen panel data with aggregated, anonymous demographic data from online data providers," according to Nielsen.

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