Social Media Marketing

One prediction about the future of the Social Media and one promise

2012-01-04T11:44:00.002+01:00

The question I have the most problems to answer (usually asked by someone in the audience after a talk about Social Media) is to tell what my predictions are for the future of Social Media. The difficulty to answer has to do with several factors, the most important being the unpredictable character of people (who are the main factor behind the social media phenomenon) and the ever changing technological context (including the developments of innovative Social Media apps). If you want to give a sound answer to this question you need to make some concrete assumptions and develop different scenarios. This is something that I do not dare to attempt in a 3 minute answer and mostly I disappoint my audience saying just this.

The truth is that most people have no problem with this question at all. This morning I googled "predictions" AND "Social" AND "Media" AND "2012" and received 147 mil results!!! It seems that by now almost everyone has become an expert in Social Media and many of these experts have also developed the charisma of prognosticator!
Looking randomly to some of these predictions you can find everything you can imagine: from copying of predictions of others to some serious attempts to say something, some logical predictions, a lot of trivia, much wishful thinking or even pure crap. It would be interesting to repeat this Google query replacing "2012" with "2010" and write an article about the sense and nonsense of the 2010 predictions. Or rather write a book for that matter.

But seriously, I feel embarrassed that I do not want to predict the future because some people really expect me to do that. So for the first time I will do one prediction for the future of Social Media and a promise:
The prediction is that the Social Media is not a bubble (not much of a prediction I am afraid but it is mu opinion to a fundamental question) and that we are already on the way to Social Media 2.0. What is Social Media 2.0 I cannot say yet with certainty. With my colleagues and our students in SOMERE we will try to figure this out and hopefully soon come with a white paper about this subject.

Facebook never forgets you

2012-01-02T23:56:00.000+01:00

Regular followers of this blog can maybe remember that in May 2010 I gave up my Facebook account and till today very proud to belong to the minority without an account to THE Social Network. However from the social media marketing researcher's perspective this proved to be not very handy! I occasionally am refused to look to marketing actions of known and less known brands in their Facebook pages because I have no account in it. So today I took the big decision to open a new account but strictly for scientific purposes! That means no friends and contacts online and a name that would conceal my identity. I gave the right gender and date of birth but no other information whatsoever. To avoid the flux of invitations for Facebook" friendships" I made the content of my page invisible to everyone except myself. You can imagine my surprise when in a few milliseconds after the account was made my screen was full with pictures and names of people all known to me inviting me to become friends!!! The system knew exactly who I was despite the new name and the lack of any information about me.

So what's the snag? Nothing more than "browser fingerprinting" I read about some time ago in combination I think with information stored in the Facebook data mines from my previous account (closed in 2010 as I mentioned earlier). It must be a piece of cake for the Facebook algorithms to recognize me and find instantly about one hundred potential "friends" and "likes".

Conclusion: once in Facebook forever in Facebook. Despite all talk and legislation protecting our privacy the simple truth is that there is no way to erase personal information once it is stored in the memory boards of Facebook's (and for sure many other social networks). The other question of course here is how much personal information is stored there and what exactly happens with it. If you want to find out you must follow the example of the Austrian law student Max Scherms

Time for a new definition of the term MARKETING?

2011-12-15T13:33:00.000+01:00

The latest definition of the term Marketing by the American Marketing Association (AMA) dates back to 2007. Marketing is defined as " the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".
In a post of this blog in 2008 I commented on the fact that this definition replaced another one, just 3 years after its introduction in 2004 but I come back to this today because this definition seems to be outdated also.

While many traditional marketers would settle with the textbook 2007 AMA definition of Marketing, someone entering the marketing field today as academic but mainly as professional has some problems with it. The marketing environment has namely dramatically changed since 2007 with several new actors entering the equation. The most important change is the emerging customer empowerment as a result of the staggering growth of the social media domain. While the AMA definition is underlining the role of marketing for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings it completely ignores this factor.

There are two main drawbacks in the 2007 definition: The first is that it is still based on the one-way thinking, the dominant way of marketers' thinking when they were in control of the domain. The marketer is not any more the powerful party in control of the medium and the message, the market power has migrated to the customer. The second issue (as a result of the first) is that two basic elements of the 2007 have a complete different nature today: I am talking about the "creation" and "communication".

"creation" is rapidly changing to "co-creation". Businesses failing to tap the customer creativity in developing new products, services and communication concepts will be the laggards of the future.
Old fashion "Communication" by means of mass and one-way media is rapidly losing ground and respect. Looking to a billboard this morning I suddenly realised that the only function of the ad displayed there was to inform me about a product and nothing else! My customer journey will actually start behind my laptop, iPad or smartphone where I would go searching about the product I saw by reading reviews and opinions of those who already bought it. The message is not anymore the text or even the medium: The Message is the Customer.

These simple realities make the latest Marketing definition obsolete. I could fill pages explaining this further but I think the bottom line is that Marketing academics must bend again over the drawing board and redefine the term marketing. We are already late with this: our students and the field are waiting.

The Future of Social Web?

2011-12-13T17:03:00.000+01:00

An interesting talk on to the future of the (Social) Web by Forrester's CEO George Colony during LEWEB 2011.

He foresees three major "Social Thunderstorms" : The Death of the Web (not the death of the Internet), The Social saturation, and the Social Enterprise. Of course next to these trends attention needs to be paid to the real social thunderstorms namely the Social Effects of the Social Media 2.0 era. Hope to have more to say about this soon.

Are Top Managers the (Top) Laggards of Social Media?

2011-11-30T21:28:00.001+01:00

A white paper published by the Dutch education and strategy consulting firm MarketingMonday reveals that CEOs and CFOs of the biggest Dutch companies (50 corporations from the AEX and AMX and American companies (first 100 in the Fortune500 list) are to their great majority no users of Social Media. The study was focused on the active use of Facebook, Hyves (the most popular Dutch social networking site), LinkedIn and Twitter in Holland and of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in the US.

The most important findings: biggest corporations top managers' participation in Social Media

Dutch CEOs / CFOs                                                    US CEOs
LinkedIn                         26%                                      LinkedIn                 8%
Facebook                         6%                                      Facebook               7%
Twitter                              1%                                      Twitter                    2%
Hyves                               1%

It is interesting that the penetration of social media is higher among Dutch top managers than their American counterparts. The study also looked to the use of social media by the CEOs of the 100 fastest growing US businesses according to the CNNMoney.com. Surprisingly the percentages are exactly the same as the US 100 biggest corporations!

US CEOs of 100 fastest growing corporations
LinkedIn 8%

Facebook 7%

Twitter 2%

The MarketingMonday report attributes the low adoption rates of social media to eight reasons: Age, Income and Education level, Knowledge, Time, Regulations, Fear, Cultur and Lack of Transparency. They also strongly recommend to CEOs to use social media indeed, mentioning several advantages for them and their company.

I think that age and lack of time are the main reasons for the low adoption of social media by top managers. On the other hand I have serious doubt that a CEO Facebook page will add much to the image of a big corporation. The names of CEOs are largely unknown to the public and few consumers will become friends of them. Those who would possibly be interested to become their friends are other CEOs and top managers who for all intents and purposes are also no users of social media.

Twitter Spam: new headache for the social nedia user?

2011-11-01T22:30:00.000+01:00

I don't know about you but my Junk email file has been substantially smaller the last months. Busting some mafia email spam networks seems to be the reason for this but I suspect that the email spam aficionados realize that email spam finds itself in the decline stage of its life cycle. A new form of spam seems to be emerging though. Counting on the increasing popularity of the social media the spammers try now to use these as spam platforms. Twitter spam seems to be the new emerging headache for Twitter users; this takes sometimes very subtle and sophisticated forms. Do we now need a Twitter spam filter? An interesting post in WIRED

En route to Social Media 2.0?

2011-09-30T10:56:00.005+01:00

On 2007 I wrote an article co-authored by my Master student Stefan Fountain* (published in 2008 in the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice) arguing that businesses could use efficiently the Social Media (the term Web 2.0 was more popular at that time) as Marketing tools. As you might remember at that time businesses were looking puzzled and helpless to the alarming signs of growing customer empowerment through the Social Media Revolution. For me and those following the developments closely at that time, was clear that the Social Media will be the next big thing in the Internet evolution and the next frontier for business strategists.
Today, just four years later, the Web 2.0 / Social Media movement (described as Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff) has been firmly embedded in the minds and hearts of online users and business strategists alike. The Social Media have also become substantial channels of political expression and tools of citizen empowerment beyond the control of states or regimes. The online users using social media as part of their daily routines has reached the hundreds of millions. With more than 50% of consumers using “smartphones, social networks and other emerging tools” McKinsey talks in a recent report about the customer becoming a media junkie. On the other hand the staggering adoption rates of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and LinkedIn by businesses has created a gold rush atmosphere reminding the dot.com age. In a recent report published here in Holland presenting the results of a survey about the adoption of the social media by businesses (Social Media Monitor, 2011) we read that by now 90% of the top 100 brands in Holland have now adopted the Social Media as part of their strategy, up from 67% last year; 48% of them has already a Social Media Manager in place. This has happened for more businesses very swiftly: only 5 from the brands that participated in the survey were active in social media longer than three years while the majority (56%) was active between six months and two years in social media.
While the picture looks encouraging we could ask ourselves whether the social media as marketing strategy is reaching its maturity stage and more importantly what will be the next step. I am afraid that soon we will detect the first signals of saturation: Any marketing tool when adopted by everyone is losing its effectiveness and uniqueness. The same I would expect to happen with the Social Media soon, mainly as a result of the unbalanced focus of businesses in 4-5 social media platforms and the very limited use of the social media as tools for promoting innovation, co-creation and mass customization. In the above mentioned Social Media Monitor we can clearly see that social networks are hardly used for R&D purposes. Furthermore there is little attention on the identification of Brand Promoters or Super Promoters as customer influencers while the social media domain is underutilized by most SMEs as (free) source of market intelligence.

Al in all a mixed picture on the status of social media as strategic marketing tools. On one hand the threat of saturation due to one-sided focus, on the other hand opportunities hardly utilized. Time for the Social Media 2.0 era?
* Constantinides E., Fountain S., 2008, Web 2.0: Conceptual foundations and Marketing Issues, Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, vol 9, nr 3, pp. 231 – 244

The tragedy of the (Social Media) gurus

2011-09-20T09:15:00.002+01:00

In this blog I raised a number of times the red flag about the well-known phenomenon of "experts" or "gurus" etc. who mushroom when management hypes erupt. The Social Media hype could not be an exception so with a lot of interest I read the post in the blog of Stephan ten Kate titled (in Dutch*) " The public ends the deception of Social media experts".
One thing some Social Media experts seem to ignore is that today there are no secrets, the public has the means and the will to scrutinize everything; treating the customer with respect is now the rule. In the good old days we would say that one unhappy customer might talk about the bad experiences to 10-12 others. Today an unhappy customer can reach thousands or even millions with his/her bad experience. The Social Media have made today the Word Of Mouth potential advantage but also a substantial risk factor for those making unsubstantiated and bases product (or service) claims. The post of Stephan shows clearly what the power of the Social Media is; he talks also about this in his reflection.
*For non-Dutch speakers a Google translation could help at least for the text!

Grolsch: A fine example of corporate responsibility

2011-09-08T09:18:00.001+01:00

The Dutch brewer Grolsch launched a few years ago a 2-liter beer tap system called Cheersch. Visiting their web site today I saw the above message: GROLSCH STOPS WITH CHEERSCH, FILL IN THE FORM FOR A REFUND.

This is not something common, a producer to take a product from the market and refund the price to customers because they will not be able to use it any more. In any case this is something worth mentioning and congratulate Grolsch for this initiative. A fine example of corporate responsibility that more businesses should follow.

The European debt crisis: Is maybe time for a Maastricht Treaty II?

2011-09-05T21:54:00.002+01:00

This blog is not political but exceptionally I write a comment on issues outside the scope of the blog when these issues are of great importance. The current European Union debt crisis is such an issue indeed.
I watched the other days a TV interview of the old Dutch politician and ex-EU commissioner Frits Bolkestein. Bolkestein argues that the solution to the Greek debt crisis will be that Greece should voluntary withdraw from the Euro zone, go back to the drachma as a national currency and solve its debt problems itself. Bolkestein recognizes that there is no mechanism provided in the EU for such a step, so a country who will do that must take the initiative itself. He also said in the interview that the entry of Greece in the Euro zone was the result of a compromise despite the fact that Greece did not need at that time the Maastricht treaty criteria; according to Bolkestein neither Italy met the criteria at that time but since Italy was allowed in the Euro zone Greece was not possible to be refused.
Bolkestein is in line with other politicians and ex-politicians in Europe, mostly from the ultra- right side of the political spectrum, who have made similar suggestions in the past. These views are however not shared by most mainstream politicians and the financial world due to the fact that that such an act will create a precedent that could lead in the end to the Euro zone and maybe of the union itself. What is true in his argumentys is that the EU does not have any mechanisms in place to deal with such situations and that Greece seems not to be able to meet the targets set by the EU and the IMF / WB with regard to increase of public revenue and decrease expenditure in combination with a rigorous privatization program. However this is something one should normally expect considering the fact that Greece is at this moment in the middle of a worsening recession, with unemployment in levels unknown before and dealing with the effects of the global financial crisis that started back in 2008. Dealing with the rampant tax evasion, making the Greek economy more competitive by opening the “closed” professions and trying to privatize public organizations are on the other hand are time consuming issues that face also a lot of resistance: from corrupted officials and public servants who profit from corrupted practices, from a disillusioned and not well informed public and also from employees of privatization candidates semi-public organizations who will lose some of their privileges, life-long employment being the most important one.

With the crisis sentiment now expanding to Spain and Italy (look to the financial market results of today 5 September) the suspicion that Greece was just a test case of speculators many are wondering how this crisis will be managed. It seems that the European Monetary System suffers from a structural weakness that in the time of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that set the foundation of the Euro was overlooked. This is a mechanism that guarantees that the Euro zone countries meet the treaty criteria without exceptions all the time and also lacks a mechanism that in case of serious disruptions like the ones we face at the moment with Greece and possibly with more countries would interfere automatically, i.e. without the political bargaining we see at this moment, and correct the situation swiftly and in a way convincing the markets.

The only way the European Union can deal with the situation today and secure its future is to stop the spasmodic and gutless approaches we see since the Greek crisis begun; this approaches failed to convince anyone, bringing more uncertainty to the financial markets and fuel speculation. I think it is time ( almost 20 years later) to deal with the problem head on with a Maastricht Treaty II.

I wonder however any of the present EU leaders has the guts to put the subject at the table, ignoring the usual voices about a federalist Europe that will surface again putting every time the whole discussion on hold. If the EU is serious about maintaining the Euro as common currency and even prevent itself from falling apart this step is inevitable. A Maastricht Treaty II repairing the flaws of the Maastricht Treaty I will be the only way out of the crisis and the only guarantee that the Euro will survive as the common EU currency. The European politicians must take their responsibilities seriously, stop using the issue for internal consumption and political gains and do their best to correct a mistake their counterparts did back in 1991: creating a monetary union without controlling and support mechanisms that would prevent a crisis like the one we experience at the moment.

European Marketing Academy (EMAC) Conference 2011

2011-05-30T14:09:00.002+01:00

Just back to the office after 4 days in Ljubljana, Slovenia for the 40th EMAC 2011 Conference, organized by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Ljubljana. The nice and warm weather made our stay very pleasant and also allowed us to enjoy the various events and social evenings, like the reception in the Ljubljana castle overlooking the city from a hill in the center of it. (In the picture with Dr. David Langley from TNO at the Ljubljana castle).

About 750 participants were registered this year. To my pleasant surprise the track E-commerce keeps growing, it is now nr 2 as to size (11 sessions). Not surprisingly a lot of the papers presented were about Social Media, with many empirical papers I must say. Good opportunities to meet old and new colleagues and interesting sessions, combined with a good organized conference and the Slovenian hospitality made the EMAC 2011 a very nice experience. Highlights were the visit to the Postonja caves and the Conference dinner. Rendezvous in Lisbon next year.

ps. Papers presented on the right (New Publications)

The myth of the Generation Einstein

2011-05-17T19:49:00.001+01:00

Conventional wisdom suggests that Generation Y, also known as Millenials and widely known in Holland as Generation Einstein following the book of Boschma and Groen, are among other things Media Smart: “Since they were babies, they have been confronted with the media – they understand advertising and have become the ultimate experts. They only need to see the advertisement to know what the marketing strategy of the company is” (http://www.generationeinstein.com/).
I do not know where such ideas are founded on but my impression is that they are based more on fiction than on facts. For sure the millenials have grown in a media-dominated society but they media smartness is limited since they are heavily exposed to one medium only, namely the Internet: they watch much less TV, read almost nothing on paper (except maybe their school text books) including newspapers and they listen much less to the radio than their parents. This one-sided exposure can never make them experts in advertising as the above quote claims. In fact on this point I would rather argue the contrary: Their almost blind faith to everything published online as the absolute truth makes it sometimes impossible to make a distinction between reality and commercial messages. I do not have any hard evidence to support this argument, maybe some research on this would be useful. However there is some evidence already that the Millenials despite their reputation as Media Smart do in fact very superficial and limited use of even the Internet and more specifically of the Social Media: A recent study of my M&G colleagues van Velzen, Bondarouk and Klerks indicates that most of the Generation Y online users are passive information consumers. A recent study we conducted among VWO 5 and 6 children confirms this findings, pointing also to the fact that the vast majority of this segment is using the Social Media for entertainment rather than anything else. The percentage of these children who are actively creating and contribute content online is negligible.
My conclusion is that often the reality can be different than the perception. Again I would argue for more research in this area and a consistent follow-up of the trends here in a longitudinal study. As about the term Generation Einstein we should use Einstein’s name more carefully!

The airline cookie conspirancy: The myth busted (at least for now)

2011-05-10T10:19:00.002+01:00

As I promised in my previous blog post I will reveal today the findings of our research on the issue of airline tickets and customer profiling by means of cookies or other more advanced techniques.
The reason for this research was that the Dutch TV program TROS RADAR came to me with the request to help them give an answer to the question whether airlines are adjusting the prices of flights on the basis of customer profiling. The reason for this question is that many online customers have the idea that prices are changing in a way that can be only explained if the airlines know who you are and discriminate for example against old customers by offering higher prices than prices they offer to new customers. In this case cookies, super-cookies or advanced “device fingerprinting” techniques.
Together with a PhD candidate in my department we did a month-long experiment tracking four airlines with requests for ticket prices from two computers: one computer was a ”normal” device like the one everybody using when surfing the web where all kinds of cookies and other fingerprinting data could be installed and followed up. The second was a “clean” computer with changing IP address and formatted every time before the use so no records of any kind could be traced whatsoever. The requests for prices were sent simultaneously, for the same flights three times a day.
The findings are short of disappointing for the cookie conspiracy theorists: For this particular setting no difference was detected between the two computers indicating that profiling does not play any role here. What we found is that prices can sometimes change within the same day and sometimes dramatically indeed. The experiment was combined with a consumer survey revealing interesting information about peoples’ attitudes on the issue: on the average about 25% of the Dutch consumers are sure that prices of airlines are based on customer information that airlines obtained without their consent and 50% of them are not sure but they think that this is possible. The question of course is: If profiling does not play any role then why prices are changing like this? The answer is Yield Management! Airlines like many other capacity-constrained service industries are using various techniques to utilize their capacity as much as possible. Price discrimination (which is nothing new in the marketing) is one of the tools used in this context.

Is the cookie conspiracy case closed? I don’t think so, this was though the first scientific study on the issue. As such it is of course subject to several limitations. What we can say is that for the four airlines we investigated, for the period of April 2011 and for the specific flights we looked at we found no evidence of price discrimination based on profiling. I can not of course exclude the possibility that this technique is applied for other flights, by other airlines, in other parts of the world. For those interested and speak Dutch they can see the TV show of last night in this link: http://www.nederland1.nl/gemist/25311.

The airline cookie conspirancy: The myth investigated

2011-05-03T12:13:00.006+01:00

In 2000 Amazon outraged some of its customers when it was revealed that different prices were charged for the same DVDs to customers with different shopping habits. This was the first widely discussed case of online price discrimination by web retailers depending on customer profiling. Since then online shops were often accused of using cookies in order to identify customers and charge them various prices. The discussion reached quite often the mass media where several cases of such practices have been revealed. The issue has been often become the subject of blogs: the airline industry, hotels and travel web sites in particular have been often accused of price discrimination based on customer cookie-based profiling. It is interesting that except Amazon who back in 2000 blamed a price test for the price discrimination and another case of a UK hotel that blamed a mistake in 2009 no online vendor has ever admitted in public that customer cookie-based profiling affects prices offered online.
Despite the mounting anecdotal evidence on the cookie conspiracy I was surprised to find out that no serious scientific research has been ever done on the issue. This while almost everyone of us can talk about an incident of unexplained differences in the price of an airline ticket that we bought online and found out that the neighbor who was flying with us in the same flight had to pay another price: no other explanation than profiling based priced discrimination is usually to blame.
The cookie conspiracy has become one of the web's urban legends and some time ago a consumer advocacy program of the Dutch TV asked me for help to investigate the issue. I am glad to say that together with a PhD student we did a moth-long study to find out whether the myth is true or not, at least in the airline world. Those interested in the answer (and speak Dutch) can see our findings in the TV program TROS Radar next Monday (20:30, May 9) in NL1. Those who will miss the program (or do not speak Dutch) but are interested in the answer must read my next blog post and the research paper we will write about the study.

Is Social Media Marketing interesting for B2B?

2011-04-15T12:00:00.001+01:00

This is a standard question I get every time I talk about Social Media Marketing to audiences including people from the B2B domain. For many social media is strongly associated with B2C marketing while industrial marketers seem to be quite enthusiastic about it. A recent post in BtoB Magazine gives some nice examples of B2B applications of Social Media; for those interested in some stats I suggest to look to the E-Marketer and this post of Brian Solis. An older report of Marketing Sherpa also indicates that B2B marketers are enthousiastic about social media as part of their marketing strategy. (see table below)

Conclusion is that there is enough talk and evidence about B2B and social media marketing and it seems that industrial marketers are equally (if not more) excited about it than their B2C counterparts. Let's wait for the first scientific evidence on this, I will keep you up-to-date here.

Tarnish your customers: They love it!! (or rather Did You Ever Hear the word Customer Advocacy?)

2011-03-27T23:04:00.013+01:00

Long ago I came to the important conclusion – and I think that I am not the only one – that the web, the mobile telephony and many other less known amazing technologies developed and commercialized in the last 20 years have made our life easier in some respects but harder in some others. I do not refer here to complains about information overload, Internet criminality or the various forms of online addictions but simply about situations where technology should make our life really easy but this does not happen because it is not used in the right way. One reason for this is the rampant ignorance of businesses as to what technology can do and also as to what marketing in the 21st century is about.
But I also have another explanation: Some years ago my eye fell on an article (I think published in the HBR) titled Tarnish Your Customers: They love it. It seems that this article (or at least the title) has been read by many, mainly from the mobile telephony industry, who obviously decided to make this slogan their business mantra.
I can’t help it but this though comes back to my mind whenever the time for renewing our mobile subscriptions at home is approaching. To keep all four members of my family connected I pay, like all of us, an expensive ticket per year. I wouldn’t have many problems with that but I have: every two years when the end of our mobile subscriptions approaches the nightmare of searching for the new package begins all over again. I must say that I consider myself lucky to use the standard university subscription and so to have escaped the torture of searching myself for a new one. But since the subscriptions of my wife and children end about the same time a searching spree is begun in search of the subscriptions fitting to each one’s individual calling patterns and browsing habits.
I do not know if you are familiar with mobile telephony tariffs but every time I look to them I question the state of mind of the mobile marketers and their bosses. It is the rule rather than the exception that the customer will have to choose among 20 -30 different tariffs with sometimes minimum differences in the services per provider. Imagine that sometimes you must compare three or four of these providers with similar crazy service schemes. And in the end after you make your choice you will most probably feel like a fool because you overlooked another offer, much better and cheaper than the one you got.
It is not surprising that mobile service providers together with a number of other industries enjoy the lowest levels of trust and respect among the public. It seems that they do not mind about this at all, despite their efforts to persuade us in their television spots that they love and care for their customers. They are fooling us: the term Customer Advocacy (something that I consistently try to explain and propagate to all my students during the last 5-6 years) is a term not included in their vocabulary. I think that their marketing strategy is to make profit by confusing their customers in the hope that they will choose a more expensive product than they really need. Or maybe they have no idea what their customers go through when they fell in the swamp of their offers. If they had any idea about marketing they would now that the over-segmentation is a failed strategy and also it is something else than mass customization. The over-segmentation was a popular strategy in the 70’s and 80’ resulting sometimes in 1500 or more brands (see for example P&G or Unilever) that had to be drastically reduced when it was realized that the only result was high customer confusion and low profitability. The new form of mobile services oversegmentation results in hundreds of price cosntructions that are only confusing customers and make the services of different providers impossible to compare.
Is there any solution here; is there any hope for us the unlucky customers? Having no choice the customers of the mobile operators oligopoly have been tolerating such a situation that only gets worst by the year.
And what can be the solution? I think a very simple one: its name is Mass Customization. There is no service more suitable for this, the only thing you need is a configurator (in case they do not know what a configurator is go to the Configurator Database to see hundreds of examples. You can add to this an online advisor that helps the customers to identify their needs and even better merge the two systems in one!
Rocket science? I don’t think so, just common sense and a bit of empathy for the customer will do the work. I promise to the first mobile services provider to do this that he will have me as customer for ever.
And something else, do not always believe everything you read, even if published in HBR.

Forgot your laptop in the train? No problem, Twitter is here

2011-03-03T13:59:00.005+01:00

From personal experience (but without the means to actually verify the story): On 15 February I saw in my Twitter feed a request to retweet a post about a laptop found in the train between Groningen and Leeuwarden (see below)

I retweeted the post without paying much attention but somehow I the case cme back to my mind a few days later. Curious for the outcome of the action I asked the person who posted the request whether the owner was found. The answer was (guess what) Yes!! Amazed I sent a second question asking how long it took this to happen and the answer was even more amazing: the owner of the laptop was found in 30 minutes! (for those who do not believe this the posts are available )

Incredible and scary at the same time. I can think of hundreds of examples that such effects can be useful as well as many others that the effects can be undesirable or even dangerous. One thing is sure, our world is now dominated by social media, almost nothing is any more impossible and there are no more secrets. If this is a good or bad thing, depends I guess from the perspective you look to it. For example for the former and current Middle East dictators the Social Media is the worst nightmare they ever had. For the other side of the coin I suggest reading The Cult of the Amateur of Andrew Keen.

Real Time Marketing ADIDAS adiVerse: A new shopping experience based on POS Mass Customization

2011-02-22T10:06:00.003+01:00

Adidas in cooperation with Intel created adiVerse, a 3D touch-screen, interactive display that increases substantially the assortment of retailers: 8.000 sport shoes can be displayed and customers can search for them, examine them from different angles and order. The system recognizes the shopper’s gender and displays the proper product selection. Adidas, like many other producers of sport articles has quite an extensive experience in online mass customization.

The display developed by Intel as part of their Connected Store vision aims at offering personalized and customized products in a traditional retailing environment, offering in other words traditional shoppers an advantage that so far only online shopping could offer.

The High Street strikes back? Let's wait for the official launch of the service during the London Olympics next year.
ps. an interesting and relevant to Real Time Marketing / mass customization article of ACCENTURE just relesed

What Marshall McLuhan would say today over the Social Media Era? He said much about it 40 years ago!

2011-02-08T12:39:00.008+01:00

Marshall McLuhan, a great mind of the 20th Century, is the one who coined the term “Global Village” and the famous “The Medium is The Message”. In this video we see him in a prophetic interview from the 60's. For those interested in this important thinker of the 20th Century there are more interviews of him on line.
ps 1. I think today McLahan would say something like: "The Medium and the Message is You"!
ps 2. My Spanish colleagues and I paid already tribute to him by seaching for Global Village evidence

Seminar Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve in the University of Twente

2011-02-03T14:36:00.000+01:00

On 26 January the department ISCM organized the seminar Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve
http://www.utwente.nl/mb/actueel/110126_Seminar_ISCM_social_media.doc/
Marc de Vries, the CEO of Hyves was the keynote speaker and about 100 guests followed the event. After the seminar we had a dinner and the UT premiere of the film The Social Network" with the story about the maverick father of the FACEBOOK Mark Zuckerberg. Next to Marc de Vries another interesting presentation was given by Daan Sip of Redchocolate and also a number of colleagues including myself talked about our research in the area of the Social Media in the UT.
For those interested in the seminar there are two links with the video streams: (My presentation in Part II)
My power point presentation is available in SlideShare
Part I
http://videolecture.utwente.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=7f2049f9b9574514847e863685b22ab21d
Part II
http://videolecture.utwente.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=1fd0ae6b2dd3473f831c2242e1d0e6111d

Survey reveals that Social Networks play a limited role in the customer's decision making process in Holland

2011-01-14T23:59:00.003+01:00

I came across a very interesting study just conducted by Fleishman-Hillard on December 2010 titled “The Digital Influence Index Study: ‘Understanding the Role of the Internet in the Lives of Consumers in the Netherlands”. The conclusions of the study:

1: The Internet is by far the most influential medium for Dutch consumers. Influence is defined as a combination of the time consumers spend on a medium and the relative importance they attach to it in their daily lives.
2: The internet is used mainly as a means to research decisions and to find supporting evidence for the decisions made. Search engines are key in the decision making process while social networks are, as of yet, hardly used. In particular when it comes to making decisions regarding durable goods and services, the Internet is viewed as the most important information source.
3: A particular remarkable conclusion is the marginal role social networks apparently play in decision making processes. The strength of social networks seems to be in emotional brand bonding rather than giving clear advice aimed at purchase decisions.
4: In general, the Dutch trust the information available on the Internet, in particular information provided by the government. The extensive amount of information available online makes it easier to learn quickly and makes it possible to make well-balanced decisions.
5: When seeking advice from others, the Dutch place a high value on the advice of friends, family and colleagues. Remarkably the majority of the respondents state that they only partly trust advice from strangers while conceding that the usefulness thereof is most likely high. The trustworthiness of content produced by sponsored or paid bloggers is extremely low.
6: Dutch Consumers are very familiar with micro blogs such as Twitter. In general the opinion is that people share too much uninteresting personal information. Consumers are also very aware of the possible implications of sharing personal information which could potentially harm their career.
7: Companies who make use of micro blogs to listen and anticipate consumers interests are appreciated more than those that don’t. Having a company keep their own micro blog is seen as less relevant. (Source: Fleishman-Hillard)

From all these findings nr 3 is particularly interesting. Social Networks play a marginal role in decision making processes. Attention here because they talk about Social Networks and not about Social Media. Is there a difference between Social Media and Social Networks? Indeed a big one since Social Networks are only one of the (five according to me) Social Media types. Since there are four more other Social Media categories I can imagine that all these together play indeed an important role in this process. This is evident if we look to conclusion nr 1 in combination with nr 5. Advice from friends, family and colleagues can be verbal or provided through social networking; In this point the study does not make any distinction and probably consumers do not see the online conversation with friends and family as social networking. No one can be sure and more research is necessary in this point. Regarding the advice from strangers this is by all means provided online: in online communities, online forums and influential blogs. There is also a discrepancy here namely that while in general consumers say that they do not trust strangers they recognize that the usefulness of strangers advice is most likely high. This means to me that in the end the social media and the information provided online plays a critical role in the consumer’s decision making process today (see also conclusion 1). The study reveals also interesting facts on media consumption trends in Holland and several other countries, underlying the need for more serious research in this area. The study also confirms something I wrote some time ago warning about excessive euphoria regarding the Social Media phenomenon.

DISTIMO REPORT: iPhone first in mobile apps in 2010

2011-01-10T10:18:00.001+01:00

DISTIMO is a startup from University of Twente graduates I mentioned in my posts earlier. In the just released report they reveal the 2010 trends in the mobile app market. As expected iPhone was the market leader followed by Android. Good work guys!!!

Social Media Seminar in the University of Twente

2011-01-06T14:58:00.000+01:00

On the 26th of January the Center of Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT) and our faculty organize a seminar titled "Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve!". I am one of the contributors and member of the panel. The program includes a dinner and the film “The social network: A story about the founders of the social network site, Facebook”. Those interested (and speak Dutch) are welcome. Book a seat per email to E.j.m.vanderveen@utwente.nl.

Shifting focus of cybercrooks: A warning to Social Media and mobile gadget aficionados

2010-12-30T00:20:00.002+01:00

A post of CNN today discussing a just released report of McAfee today for a shift in the focus of cybervillains and hackers towards social online location sites, social networking sites and Apple’s iPhone. The same report also suggests that the volume of email spam has been substantially reduced (this is something I can also confirm from personal experience: from about 100 spam emails my average went down to 30 the recent months).
Regarding the new hacking threat of the socially networked I am not surprised at all, considering that the social media is now the hot stuff. People can however easily minimize such threats by just using their brain a little bit. Nothing is more interesting for example for burglars than knowing where people are exactly at every moment of the day and pedophiles appreciate information on the whereabouts of kids. The active and empowered Internet user must learn also the downside of the social media revolution and reconsider (or start thinking about) personal information and privacy from the safety perspective.

Predictions for the Future II (and Trends 2011)

2010-12-27T11:39:00.001+01:00

First of all my best wishes for a Happy and Successful 2011 to all colleagues, friends and blog visitors.
Some more future stuff, this time from TrendHunter. I would not take everything so seriously but anyhow it is an interesting video.