Sunday, November 26, 2006

Online Banking

I wanted to write an article about a Wall Street Journal new of Thursday, November 23 2006, in his European edition. This article talks about banks, and their problem of differenciation. Whatever the services or the products they offer to their customers, they all look alike, and hence, customers can not really tell the differences there are between one or another bank. And on such mature markets, especially the American and European ones, where the best way to grow is to gain market shares. Some banks decided then to use Internet as a tool to provide new innovative services, and then to add value to their existent proposals.

Among them, the Wells Fargo (which was by the way my bank while I was in the US), propose an online tool to help people regularly sock away part of their paycheck to meet a long term goal called "My Savings Plan". Commerce Bancorp has even gone further, and let their wealthy clients view and manage all their accounts online.

The Internet tools allow too, more than the primary banking services, to help out customers in their every day life. For example, Bank of America speeds up bill paying, on a next day basis.

Letting customers taking care of their accounts on line has a positive effects for bank too. It is cheaper for the banks to serve customers via Internet.

The next step : mobile phone. This media allows to touch the customer wherever he is at any time. Thus, banks are retooling in biid to attract users.

I think it is a very important fact, that banks, which are part of our every day life, allow us to manage better and at any time our bank accounts. It shows a good example of how the Internet can provides efficient differenciation and important services for customers. I hope french banks have been aware of that article.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

New web site www.schriver.fr

I just wanted to let you know a new version of my web site will be soon available (probably at the end of this week). My work experiences and my scholarship will be more detailed, especially for the english part. So see you soon on www.schriver.fr

blog danone

I wanted to post a message about a conference I assisted during the SEMO, the annual fair of the marketing researches. This event is a good opportunity to see the new trends and methods of the marketing researches. Among couple of very innovative technique, there was a danone conference about a new market study tool they used : a blog. Danone is always seeking for objective, and not biased opinion of their customer, especially concerning some highly innovative products. Hence they decided to develop a private blog, to obtain those information.

A market research consulting company recruits some testers, according to the target of Danone's products. Then the customers are explained the use of the blog, and the food company give them some of their products to test. Then, every day, the testers are invited to post messages about how they experienced the products and their opinions.

This concept is also a good opportunity to create synergy between the testers, that can exchange information about how they consume the products.

This new way to test innovative products seems to work good. I think some other companies seeking for testing new products, and to test different uses for those products, should experience it.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Michael Porter

J'aimerais parler aujourd'hui d'un homme qui a eu une importance fondamentale dans le marketing moderne, et sur la stratégie d'entreprise. C'est homme est Michael Porter. Né en 1943 et professeur à Havard, il a développer des théories sur les chaînes de valeurs et sur les avantages concurrentiels.
Il a ainsi modéliser l'environement d'une entreprise autour de cinq facteurs :
- le pouvoir de négociation des clients ;
- la menace de nouveaux entrants sur le marché ;
- le pouvoir de négociation des fournisseurs ;
- les produits de substitution ;
- la concurrence intrasectorielle.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Carton rouge à Vivarte

Etant étudiant en école de commerce, j'ai souvent des études de cas à réaliser sur des entreprises. La dernière en date fut celle concernant le groupe Vivarte, spécialisé dans la distribution de vêtement et de chaussure, avec des enseignes tels que André, La Halle aux Vetements. Il a été plus que dur de trouver des informations sur ce groupe. Les personnes en internes que nous avons pu contacter ne savait pas vraiment ce qui se passait, chiffres de 2003 sur le site Internet, impossible d'avoir des estimations de ventes sur les enseignes du groupe... Enfin, on a déjà vu mieux au niveau de la communication institutionnel, surtout pour un groupe de cette importance...

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Good tips for your market researches

I know that sometimes it is very hard to find out information on some particular and specialized markets. However, it exists some cheap way to get some. Ubifrance, the french agency that helps out french company to export, publishes some market researches worldwide, on very specialized topics such as the direct marketing in Japan, the market of frozen food in Poland... What is true, is that those studies are in french... But still! Some people can be interested by that... And still, it will be less expensive than going through a market research company, since most of the studies are about 250 euros... Don't hesitate to go on www.ubifrance.fr to get more information.