Cars Equiped With Wifi

Found on PPC's blog. Ford since to be launching a new Wifi service for its cars. This is interesting because, Internet has been set up in planes and trains, and now I don't see the reason why it wouldn't get into our cars. Indeed, what is interesting with this concept is that you have people that you communicate with captive customers:

1. They are in a place where they can't escape, at least during the trip.
2. They are in a place where they don't have much choice in terms of entertainment
3. They are in a place where there is no competition, as long as the manufacturer locks it.

Now the challenge is to provide content that would be adapted to cars, in terms of entertainment. I believe video on demand and games must be the best. Thus, I don't think it is convenient for a long period of time to type and write on a laptop in a car. But I might be wrong. Now, the challenge will be to set up a viable connection that will allow cars to get a great Internet service. But this video shows out that technologically, Ford already have a way to make mobile Internet in a car.

Vending Machines For Data Mining : Coca Cola Case Study

This morning I was watching a TV show on CNBC about the fantastic success story of Coca Cola. This show was emphasizing on the new challenges that Coca Cola had to face while becoming one of the largest company in the history.

At the end, they were showing how Coca Cola was diversifying its range, by selecting new brands, which are now targeting niche markets, but could become on a mid to long term basis potential flagship products.

Coca Cola has invented a new vending machine, equipped with a flat screen, which displays the different products you could get from it. The machine was actually a fountain, and was proposing the different Coca Cola Company’s product, with a wide range of varieties. For instance, you could pick Vanilla Coke, and mix it for example with another beverage.

One of the goal and advantage of the new vendor machine, is that it could actually extracts data of people’s consumption. This is a great idea, because out of these results, Coca Cola is able to get new consumption trend, and then identifies potential new blend and products to develop.

Right now, the vending machine seems to have been set up only in one place. But now, if it is developed further, you could have pretty accurate data about it. It is very difficult in the food industry to get data about customer consumption, as retailers are like a curtain between customers and brands, and I believe Coca Cola used well their advantage, which is heir vending machine business.

This is interesting to see how Coca Cola embraces technology in order to get customer data, and then to leverage it for new products. I hope to find the video soon to post it on this article.

Prospect Relationship Management

Customer relationship management, or CRM aims to manage relationship with customers during its lifetime, from the earliest stage, when the customer is not yet a customer but rather a prospect or a shopper, to the end, while he decided to switch service or is not in the target anymore. Hence, CRM should not only take care about customers, but should also focus on the decision making process, and therefore, prospects and shoppers should still be taken into consideration. This is the reason why a lot of CRM programs and softwares are including prospects into their customers' profile, in order to get some data, and be able to provide them the offer tat will trigger the purchase.




In order to provide the best response to prospect, you should leverage the data and knowledge you already know about your own customers. Your customers at some point have been prospects, and identifying why they purchase your product, will enable you to emphasize those aspects.




Also, for ecommerce businesses, you could check the shopper's behavior to identify which aspects turn them down, when they have decided to leave the website and why.



To get further details about prospect relaitonship management, if you speak French, I propose you to check this pdf file, and to visit this blog.

Loyalty Reward Program Case Studies: Shopping For Clothing

This week end I went shopping to the mall, in different clothing retails. As I was visiting those different stores, I couldn't help noticing that nearly all of them delivered a loyalty reward program. This might be because I am naturally attracted by the topic, and has an expertise in this area.

What is also very interesting to notice is that they are all pretty different from each other. Therefore, I wanted to give you a little review of what I have noticed, and what I think about them.

Etam owns a program, but in order to join it, you must have purchased at least 60€ in the store. This is very interesting as a loyalty reward program, and more generally customer relationship management strategies, are based on rewarding the best customers. Hence, by proposing the card to actual good customers, this loyalty reward program actually shows exclusivity. Now the bad point is that there is no way you can think about this loyalty program as a customer. Nothing displays the program, and I had to ask the lady to get information.

Devred: One of my favorite one. Probably because I worked for the company not so long ago. I believe it was one of the first company to propose one. I like the way they send me promotions via emails. I believe they are not intrusive, since I don't receive a lot of emails. Also, their promotions are most of the time very interesting (-40% for example on the whole store). I also like the way their evidences: they show out the advantages clearly. Devred proposes a nice card, which is also an interesting choice. The card hence affirms the ownership to a club, and sends the card holder apart.

Sinequanone: What is interesting is that for this one you don't need a card. You register online, and they find you thanks to your name in store. This is cool because it cuts most of the costs related to loyalty reward program: Getting the data into the system. Also, creating cards is very costly, and not necessarily required. Indeed; studies have shown 6 years ago that customers where carrying a maximum of 5 loyalty cards in their wallet. By not getting a loyalty reward card, you hence don't force your customer to get it on him, and then, it is easier for him.

Go Sport: Now it is also interesting because it is the only card that you need to pay. It reinforces the entry into a relationship. The customer needs to make a step toward the company to establish the relationship. This fee is reimbursed fast, as they propose you a flyer with coupons that provides you more money than they 8€ you pay to get in. Still, this is interesting. Something else that is interesting, on a long term relationship point of view, is that they propose an insurance on clothing, which means that you secure the integrity of the clothes you buy, at least for a whole year.

I think this has been very interesting, because in this industry, you can see that loyalty programs can be very different.

Google's Goggles: A Revolution To Customer Experience

Google has shown not so long ago its new project called Goggles. The idea is to use cameras built in cell phones to provide information about pretty much anything that could be around the user. On top of the camera's view, Goggle recognizes what is around you, building, stores or restaurants, and proposes you Google's search results on top of it. Hence, you are able to access a wide range of information while walking down the street.

Now it enables new possibilities for marketers. It seems that through mobile marketing and all those new smartphone technologies, the first moment of truth concept is going to become more and more essential. Indeed, now customers are able to get information whenever they want about pretty much anything.

Check out the video:

Now you need to understand that it will become more and more vital for retailers and companies to provide information through those mobile devices.

De la création d'une application Iphone

Les applications Iphones ont le vent en poupe. En effet, comme le montre cette publicité, il est possible de faire tout ou presque grâce à ces applications.

Maintenant, il est intéressant de savoir comment créer ces applications. J'ai trouvé cet article sur les secrets du développement d'une application Iphone.

Genèse de l'application iPilule

Imaginée par une petite équipe de 4 personnes, l'application payante iPiluleexploite une bonne idée : une alarme intelligente et qui rappelle aux filles de prendre leur pilule contraceptive, via des notifications push et de manière adaptée à leur cycle menstruel. En moins d'un mois, l'application est développée.

Plein d'espoirs, l'équipe de développement croit à la force de son projet : "En visant les blogs dédiés à l'iPhone, les magazines féminins/santé/style de vie et les blogs de fille, nous avions de bonnes chances de toucher les acheteuses potentielles de l'application", écrit Simon Dawlat.

Les quatre partenaires sont néanmoins réalistes et estiment la population susceptible d'acheter l'application à 148 500 personnes. "Dans l'absolu : c'est très peu. Si on part du postulat qu'on réussira à toucher 10% de ces femmes (14 800) via notre communication, et à en convertir en clientes, mettons, 5% (7040), cela nous fera 7 040 x 0,79 € = 5 561 € de revenus potentiel".

En retirant la dîme d'Apple, on atteint 3 893 euros. "Qu'à cela ne tienne, convaincus de notre idée et surtout de notre capacité à la réaliser ayant réuni une team aux talents parfaitement complémentaires, on lance le projet", explique le chef de projet.

Les débuts sont rassurants. Contrairement à ce qui se dit, la validation de l'application par Apple ne prend pas trop de temps, 19 jours pour être précis. Le même jour, l'application est donc officiellement en vente sur l'App Store.

Mais à ce moment, l'équipe de développeurs commet sa première erreur en ne communiquant pas pour des "raisons personnelles et logistiques". "Du coup, nous ratons le pic de ventes qui arrive à toute application au moment de sa sortie, puisqu'elle passe en page d'accueil de sa catégorie dans l'AppStore (également agrégée en 'nouveautés' par des dizaines de sites dans le monde qui reprennent automatiquement les données de l'AppStore). Et nous passons à coté de cette impulsion dans les ventes, qui se fait sans nous", note le chef de projet.

Le résultat est sans appel : après 11 jours de commercialisation, iPilule a été téléchargé seulement 112 fois, soit un chiffre d'affaires royal de 61 euros pour l'équipe.

1er enseignement : exploiter au maximum la visibilité de l'application dès les premiers jours.

La suite des événements est à l'avenant. "Je reçois un inquiétant email via Apple le 4 décembre évoquant la possibilité d'un conflit de copyrights avec l'application d'un autre développeur. Je contacte ce dernier rapidement pour tenter d'éclaircir la situation et si possible régler ce problème à l'amiable. Il s'avère que ce développeur pense qu'Apple retire de l'AppStore toutes les applications aux concepts trop similaires - une confusion avec le fait qu'Apple a tendance à retirer les applications trop similaires aux siennes.

Le dialogue est peu cordial mais existant et nous sommes accusés par ce développeur de l'avoir copié honteusement. Des commentaires négatifs fleuriront par la suite sur presque tous les articles parlant d'iPilule et même dans l'AppStore, auxquels nous décidons de ne pas répondre".

2e enseignement : analyser l'existant avant de développer une application

L'équipe d'iPilule avait bien repéré des applications rendant le même service. Mais elle avait considéré qu'en proposant un produit plus complet et plus efficace, elle éviterait ce type de problèmes. Raté.

Dans le même temps, malgré une offensive de communication, les ventes peinent à décoller : seulement 24 ventes sont réalisées en une semaine. La déprime gagne l'équipe...

Mais les efforts commencent à porter leurs fruits notamment grâce à la publication d'articles dans la presse spécialisée en ligne. Les ventes grimpent à une centaine par jour ce qui permet à l'application de se hisser en troisième position du classement de la catégorie Styles de Vie de l'App Store. Le cercle vertueux se referme.

Par contre, la publication d'une brève dans le magazine Elle (qui tire pourtant à 300 000 exemplaires) n'a pas d'effets ponctuels sur les ventes. Ce qui constitue une surprise et une déception.

3e enseignement : le travail de relation-presse est plus rentable sur internet

le travail de relation presse semble stratégique, notamment pour des applications très spécialisées. Mais visiblement, la presse en ligne semble beaucoup plus 'rentable' que la bonne vieille presse papier.

"La logique d'un lancement fort, combinant des relations presse et de la publicité sur des sites spécialisés, pour monter dans les classements de l'AppStore, est un procédé dont l'efficacité est désormais avéré", souligne le chef de projet.

En fait le salut viendra d'Apple himself qui décide de placer iPilule en première page de l'App Store. Résultat, les ventes bondissent de 70%. Mais si le bilan s'améliore : 1059 ventes en 10 jours, soit 585 euros pour l'équipe, les résultats demeurent encore faibles.

"Vivre de l'AppStore n'est pas chose aisée puisque pour le moment, après commission d'Apple et avant impôts, iPilule nous a rapporté exactement 660 euros", observe Simon Dawlat.

Le jeu en vaut-il alors la chandelle ? Pour Simon Dawlat, excepté les erreurs de jeunesse commises, la clé du succès se trouve peut-être dans la déclinaison de l'application. "Une logique globale est essentielle - si notre 'succès' avait été répliqué dans 10 autres pays dont les US, nous serions riches à l'heure qu'il est ! Malheureusement, malgré une application traduite en 7 langues (!) nos efforts hors de France sont restés vains, et les ventes dans les autres Stores, quantités négligeables".

Des confidences intéressantes sur le processus de mise en ligne. Avez vous des retours sur expérience? Avez vous développé des applications Iphone? Je serai très intéressé d'en discuter avec vous.

Statistiques sur Twitter en France

Il est toujours difficile d'avoir des statistiques sur l'utilisaiton de Twitter en France. Il est pourtant intéressant de voir ce qui se passe, sachat que nous avons bien du retard à ce sujet comparé à ce qui se passe aux Etats-Unis, où tous les média utilisent Twitter en complément de leurs activités. Ainsi, peu de journalistes, sites d'Informations ou journaux ne possèdent de multiples compte Twitter.

J'ai trouvé sur le blog de Nicolas Clairembault, une présentation à ce sujet.

Twitter study by faberNovel and L’Atelier

View more documents from L’Atelier.

Voici les principaux enseignements que nous pouvons dégager:

• Twitter est connu des internautes français: selon cette étude, 60% des français ont entendu parlé du service. Ainsi le taux de notoriété est très développé, surtout que les média traditionnel n'ont pas forcément beaucoup communiqué à ce sujet.
• Peu d'utilisateur: Uniquement 9% de ces personnes connaissant Twitter utilise ce service. C'est très peu. Il y a ainsi peu de conversion. D'où vient le problème? Est ce parce qu'il ne comprenne pas ou ne save pas comment utiliser Twitter? Peut être que cela vient effectivement du fait qu'il y est peu d'utilisateur. A partir du moment où les amis sont sur Twitter, ainsi les internautes se mettront à utiliser le service. C'est ce qui s'est passé avec Facebook. La croissance peut donc être très rapide. Néanmoins, il y a un très fort effort marketing à entreprendre pour le développement de Twitter dans le pays.
• Des utilisateurs jeunes: Le coeur de cible sont des hommes et des femmes de moins de 35 ans.
• Une utilisation mobile: On sait très bien que Twitter prend tout son sens via des applications mobiles, permettant de s'exprimer dès que l'on peut. Cela se confirme puisque plus de 30% des utilisations se font via mobile. Cependant l'utilisation se répartie bien entre le site Internet, les clients desktop et le mobile. Ainsi Twitter a su profiter de l'augmentation de 170% des utilisateurs d'Internet mobile aux USA en 2 ans.
• 69% des utilisateurs déclarent utiliser Twitter pour avoir accès à des promotions: C'est une formidable aubaine pour les marques. On voit donc tous le potentiel de publicité et marketing de la plateforme. Les entreprises s'étant lancé dans le management de communauté ont certainement pris de l'avance à ce sujet.

Cependant, on voit bien à la fin de la présentation que Twitter a encore du mal à prouver qu'il peut monétiser son contenu. Ainsi, cela fait déjà plusieurs années que Twitter parle de tester des modèles économiques, mais pour l'instant nous n'avons rien vu. Cependant, Twitter montre qu'il grossit en France, et à partir d'une certaine taille critique de nombre d'utilisateur, il sera capable de devenir un média de masse.

500 Mobile Phone Numbers In India: Toward The Mobile Internet Revolution

The Times Of India announced recently that India has reached 500 mobile phone numbers, which makes it the 2nd largest group of phone users after China.

India has 13 to 14 operators providing wireless connectivity — mostly mobile — in its 22 service areas. Of these, 8-9 companies are operational and another 5-6 are obligated to launch service to meet rollout obligations. Many of the new entrants who had bagged spectrum in January 2008 have been unable to get off the ground nearly two years after receiving licences. Hence, the market is still pretty open.

Despite the fact 3G network is probably miscellaneous, this is still a great opportunity for mobile Internet to grow. I have assisted to a presentation of Gartner expert in mobile technologies Thomas Husson which considers that India might skip the traditional wired Internet directly to wireless network. Hence, as these new emerging countries are skipping decades of technology steps, by adapting to occidental standards, developing a wireless network to have access to the Internet would probably be cheaper than a wired one.

Wimax, 3G and 4G networks, would hence be easy to set up to provide access to a country like India, especially because the main population hub are spread out over a very large country. This will of course have an impact on the Internet ecosystem development. Indeed, as we are seeing in the Western side of the world Iphones, mobile laptops among other technologies. India could become a development market where mobile applications and e business website could grow fast.

This is very interesting as India is also a technology friendly country as they have developed a high know how with in terms of development and engineering. The market might still be too low to develop a strong ebusiness presence, but I believe that within the next few years, we will see some great innovations in term of e commerce's customer experience, and new mobile applications.

New Service To Find Stores Information: Yelp

I didn't know much about Yelp before today. Yelp is a web 2.0 website which provides reviews and information about stores and restaurants. The website is nice and will help you find the best places to visit and hang around.

Now Yelp has launched recently a new Iphone app. And I believe that this new mobile application gives another feel and enhance the customer experience. Indeed, the main advantage is that it combines both the Yelp's website information and the GPS capabilities of the smartphone. Hence, the application can gives you reviews of retails around you in real time. You should check out what Robert Scoble thinks about it.

Mobile phones application and the first moment of truth

Speaking about the first moment of truth concept, which considers that customers make their purchase decision within a short period of time, owning information and/or coupons for a store located at couple of meters from them will probably be a turn on. When the customers have already triggered their decision making process by going out in a mall, and they hesitate which retail to choose from, they have a tool that will help them during this crucial moment.

Mobile phones reviews applications to provide improved data

"The combination of local reviews and mobile is significant because Yelp now allows consumers to post reviews as they are eating, drinking or visiting a business. Think about the review of a restaurant that had bad service. Likely, the consumer will be emotionally charged about the poor service. Before the iPhone app, the consumer would write the review after the restaurant visit, when he or she had cooled off a bit. Now the new app will allow the angry consumer to enter a particularly distasteful, and emotionally charged review directly from the restaurant’s table. "

Indeed, thanks to this new mobile phone app, the user is able to give his feedback right away during his experience and right after, which avoids second thoughts and then, can clearly gives a picture of his experience while shopping or consuming. This is very interesting, because thanks to it, I believe that customer reviews would be clearly different than the one that are written in front of a computer several months sometimes after what the customer has experienced.

Mobile phones for enhanced customer experience and customer relationship

That confirms my opinion that mobile apps is one of the biggest challenge for customer relationship management experts. Mobile phones decuplate the potential of customer experience.

The Web 2.0 Dilemma

Web 2.0 is not future anymore. It is present. You can see it as Facebook and Twitter growths are flattening since we have already entered the mass market. People uses this technology and has entered into social concious.

Of course, the Web 2.0 potential is great for companies. This is a brand new media which is still to be explored. But it is pretty scary for companies. Hence companies for the past decades have been aiming and setting up processes and technologies to control investments, data, information in order to drive efficiency. Therefore, before any product launch, public appearance of CEOs or advertisement, everything had to be perfect and clean, in order to show off the company's professionalism.

But web 2.0 is not controllable in the way that company's wants. Hence, if a company masters the public relationship art, as it knows journalists and reporters, as it has prepared itself to any kind of eventuality, web 2.0 and how the information can be spread fast and wide makes it impossible to control.

Community managers needs to establish a relationship, where the customer and the company are on the same level. And companies have trouble doing that. All the different customers interactions have been defined through automatic processes in order to turn every event previsible. This is the reason why a lot of customer requests are responded by non sense answers over the phone or in store. Because the process has been set in such a way that it is more and more difficult to adapt to individuals.

Web 2.0 is made out of individuals, that could have a great powers to spread the word of mouth, and therefore automatic responses are not the best way to interact with this new medium. Community managers can't use this new media the same way call centers do. Because if one unhappy customer could turn down 10 people, unhappy customers could reach thousands of people through their communities and other network interractions.

How should a company approach this problem? They must consider community management seriously and define new processes that would enable community managers to respond in the best way to customers. That means flexibility and responsabilities.

Wells Fargo: Une très bonne idée de service à valeur ajoutée

Lorsque j'habitais aux Etats-Unis, je possédai un compte banquaire à la Wells Fargo, l'une des plus grosses banques américaines. J'avais bien sûr une carte banquaire, ainsi qu'un accès Internet pour suivre en direct les opérations sur mon compte.

Mais il y a une option dont je voulais vous parler aujourd'hui, car je la trouve très intéressante. En effet, la banque développe de plus en plus son rôle de conseiller financier, afin de mettre en valeur ses capacités à faire gagner de l'argent avec de l'argent. Il y a ainsi sur Internent une page où l'on a accès à une sorte de compte d'exploitation, ou bien un suivi des dépenses. Ce tableau prend en compte tous les retraits et les utilisations de la carte, et ordonne ceux-ci en catégorie.

Quelques exemples:
Je vais acheter de l'essence à la station Mobil: le moteur va reconnaître que je viens d'acheter de l'essence et va donc me compter cet achat dans la partie transport. Si j'ai règlé automatique une mensualité pour un crédit de la maison, il va me comptait ceci dans la partie habitation.

Ce système permet ainsi de piloter les dépenses et donc faire des ajustements budgétaires nécessaires.

Quelques petits problèmes
Bien sûr, le système n'est pas parfait. Ainsi, tous les achats ne sont pas prix en compte. Tout bêtement, si j'achète quelque chose avec de l'argent liquide, la machine ne pourra pas détecter ce qui c'est passé. De même, la machine n'arrive pas à tout classé, et il y a quelques magasins où il y aura des erreurs. Cependant, le concept est plus qu'intéressant, et porteur de valeur ajouté pour le client. De même, on peut imaginer que le client soit dans la capacité de faire ces ajustements manuels, afin de garder son compte en place.

Et vous, qu'en pensez vous?

Centres commerciaux: Avons nous toujours besoin d'un hypermarché comme locomotive

Les centres commerciaux ont toujours basé leurs rayonnements sur des machines commerciales impressionnantes. Il y a une centaine d'années maintenant, les "grands magasins" de type Printemps ou Galleries Lafayettes, étaient les point d'ancrage du développement commerciale d'autres enseignes plus spécialisées. Vinrent ensuite les hypermarchés, qui était une source exceptionnelle de trafic et qui plus est, régulier, toutes les semaines.

Mais maintenant, le modèle de l'hypermarché et de "tout sous le même toit" est mis à mal alors que de plus en plus de "category killer", ou magasins spécialisés proposant des produits à plus bas prix dans leurs gammes que celle des hypermarché, sont en train de devenir les références sur leurs marchés.

Il y a quelques semaines de cela j'ai lu un article dans LSA si je me souviens bien, qui montrer un centre commercial très spécial. En effet, au lieu de proposer un hypermarché, le centre avait une offre alimentaire composée de "category killer": un hard discounter, un magasin spécialisé en surgelé, et un magasin de Bio.

Ainsi, au lieu d'avoir un hypermarché, la multiplicité des magasins spécialisés permettaient de palier à ce manque. Cela me rappelle aussi aux Etats-Unis où j'ai vu beaucoup de chaines de fast food mutualisées leurs restaurant, proposant chacun sous le même toit des produits différents, mais permettant de les manger au même endroit. Bien sûr, cela peut aller plus loin en ayant par exemple un Mc Donald's pour manger, un starbucks pour le matin et un Ben&Jerry's sous le même toit pour répondre aux différents moment de la journée et ainsi optimisé le taux de rotation et le trafic tout au long de la journée.

Alors que certains s'interrogent si les hypermarchés ne devraient pas d'une part diminuer leur surface de vente et d'autre part recentrer leur offre sur l'alimentaire, qui génère le réel profit de ce type de magasin, je pense qu'effectivement il peut exister ce type de centres commerciaux sans hypermarchés, mais avec des category killers qui jouent la complémentarité, et qui pourquoi pas, pourraient pousser l'idée plus loin en offrant des services communs permettant des gains de temps aux consommateurs (gestion des paiements et des livraisons commune par exemple).

Rewarding Vs Prospecting

It is challenging to set a customer relationship programs which will drive prospect in and reward the best customers. The whole idea behind customer relationship management is that every customer is different, and that they have a different value for the company. Hence, some customers might cost you money because they requires a lot of after sales service for very few sales.

A bunch of companies are mistaking by thinking they should focus on believing that good customers should not be rewarded into CRM programs. The belief is that since they are good customers and that they are happy anyway about the service, there is little more to expect from those customers. But actually they are the ambassador of your brand, and you could leverage them to improve your products and customer service.

Also, one of the main challenge is to get an agressive sales strategy. As competition is getting tough, it is difficult to get a new customer, and hence, companies are willing to pay lot of money to get them.

That is what is going on with cell phones companies, where you'd better change your service if you want to change your phone, as companies are giving better discounts to prospects than actual customer. But this is a dangerous game to play too.

Focus On One Problematic

You can't at the same time reward loyal customers while getting new ones. Of course, owning a great loyalty reward program will turn some new customers in, but that shouldn't be the main goal.

Get A Large Portfolio Of Reward

I believe that the reason should be in providing different kind of customer advantage upon you are targeting loyal customers or prospects. Probably loyal customers would imply more after sales support or intangible assets (invitations to special events, or others), while a prospect is just seeking for the best deal right away.

Anyways, it is always difficult to size the reward, but it is important first to keep your best customers rewarded, because they give you more than sales, but also potential new leads, and secondly, to keep some rewards for prospects that are hard to measure compare to your other customers.

Orange Facing Legislation To Cross Data Mining

Orange is one of the world leading provider of Internet and cell phone networks. The company owns by instance the biggest French marketshare.

Orange aims to leverage its customer data base in the DSL Internet market to prospect new customers, and hence to make cross selling strategies.

Thanks to data mining, Orange will be able to segment its existing customer data base to provide the right message at the right persons. The challenge of the industry is the conversion of Internet and mobile devices, which requires companies to propose comprehensive bids including, phoning, Internet and TV access.

So far French government has not allowed Orange to do so. Probably because Orange had a strong customer data base due to the former monopoly it had couple of years ago, prior to the privatization of the industry. Hence, they have a great number of customers that have been given to them at this moment, and that have never decided to switch.

I believe there is indeed a great opportunity for Orange to get leverage from this asset. However, so far it doesn't seem to be possible.

Smartphones Sales Still Boosting Cell Phones Figures

The number of smartphones users is constantly growing and is the main source of growth for the cell phone market.

According to Gartner if cell phones sales has been steady, increasing by 0.1 %, with 309 million devices sold, smartphones counts for 12% of these purchases. I believe this trend will go on with the christmas period, and will see more and more people equiped with multimedia gears like Iphones, Blackberries or Android devices.

LinkedIn Brings A Twitter Feature

It has been a while I am waiting for such a feature. Same thing that the list feature on Twitter, Those two main social media are getting new synergies. LinkedIn is a great service that enables first to create an online profile, or extended resume to promote online, and secondly, to connect with your business network. But one of the weakness of LinkedIn was that it was static, meaning there was nothing on your profile that would evoluate in such a manner that it would drive users to go on their account on a daily basis. For example, the Facebook power, and the reason why it is so attractive for brands and advertisers, is that users owns a feed of actions and events which convinces people to check often what is going on. The same thing for Twitter. This is the Instant Web.

Now LinkedIn already had great other features that have been added over the time. For example the question and answers feature was pretty nice, but still limited I believe. Now that you can post your Twitter feed on LinkedIn, it makes your resume/profile interractive, and shows out what you are at the moment.

Now there is still some other features that I miss on LinkedIn. Especially, all the features that are dealing with groups. At some point, I was developping the alumni association of my master at Dauphine. But compared to Viadeo's hub feature, where you can add up job proposition, creates forum or even have a calendar of event, LinkedIn has limited options.

Hence, I believe that LinkedIn should boost this part of their business to enable people to create great private business groups. But I believe it will be on soon...

Video Counts For 27% Of Internet Use

I believe we are done with the web 2.0 trend. Web 2.0 enabled people to get in contact with each other, share, but also creates online. It has been some kind of revolution, and now the use of social media is going mainstream, which changes the way companies and brands interact with customers.

This revolution has been supported by websites like Youtube or dailymotion, which allowed people to broadcast their own content in a very unique and innovative way. Thanks to the bandwidth capacity that rocketed up, video has become one of the most consumed media on the Internet. According to a recent study, video watching counts for 27% of the Internet use.

I have attended not so long ago the Parisian Videocamp 3, which was focused on the use of video on the Internet. There is still room for innovation in this business.

But something that is very interesting about this study, is to see that Youtube has revolutionized the way to consume video. Hence, in the web 1.0 era, video was mostly downloaded from peer to peer platforms, whereas now it is consumed instantly by streaming. This is now I believe the "web 3.0", or the evolution of social media: the Instant Web. It will be the theme of Leweb Paris conference. Consumer want everything now, and so do they for video. They don't want to wait for downloading content.

While the overall video numbers are up, Sandvine reports that P2P usage is down to 20 percent of total Internet traffic, from 32 percent in 2008. Sandvine said that the amount of P2P usage is growing on an absolute basis, but VOD applications are growing faster. Sandvine looked at the bits per second, per protocol, along with how many active hosts per protocol on the network.

This dip in P2P echoes other recent reports from Cisco and Arbor Networks that show use of peer-to-peer file-sharing as a percentage of broadband usage is on the decline. In June of last year, Sandvine said that P2P traffic was hogging up bandwidth, generating 43.5 percent of Internet traffic, but that study was just of several, unnamed “leading” service providers, which could explain the discrepancy from the 32 percent number released today.

I believe that the Internet is going to pursue its revolution on how we consume videos. The very same way it changes the way we consume Newspapers, or more widely written news, and radio, with customizable content and podcasting, the revolution of video consumption is on.

Social Media Users' Profile Around The World

Want to have some statistics about social media users? High tech company Forrester has published the results of one of their studies, which establishes an outlook of the use of social media in different countries.

Forrester sets 6 profiles of social media users, depending on their level of use of the media:

• Consumers
• Creators
• Critics
• Collectors
• Joiners
• Spectators
• Inactives
  
  

Brand Equity Worth Much More Than Anything

Brand equity might be something intangible and hence not really the specialty of CRM experts, but this is something so strong you can't deny. I was at the Disneyland park the other night and as I was leaving the movie theater, I have noticed that even though the park was closed, the magical music of Disney was still playing, all lights out. This might seem totally unecessary for most of you, but this is those kinds of little details that build strong brands, and that set those company apart.

The Example of Coca Cola

Some companies have based their value on their brand. I believe Coca Cola is the best example. Coca Cola has existed since more than a century and based its success on the very same product. In the whole history of Coca Cola, most of their product sales is the classic Coke. No major innovation has brought in, neither in terms of products (the failure of the New Coke is actually one of the most outstanding marketing case study), nor in terms of packaging/distribution, nor in terms of sales promotion.

But Coca Cola has been able to invent a myth, and foremost to keep this myth alive and well being, that it sets it apart.

Of course Coke is a great product and it helps, but the branding effort has been tremendous. Same thing for Disney, that has been able to pursue its greatness thanks to marketing superiority.

A brand must live

What is important is that the company embraces the brand value, and that this brand lives in their every day actions.

There are a lot of tools and ratios that helps chief of marketing to measure their brand return on investment, and I like to discuss about branding score, which is a wide concept to be thought.

But once more branding is also another important part of your customer relationship management strategy, because the brand is the face of the company, and it is the personnality the customer is in contact with when it uses the product or simply when it is in contact with an ad.

Zappos Aiming To More Personalization

Zappos.com, one of the hottest internet retailer, which masters the web 2.0 technology, has recently hired choicestream to empower their website with more personalization features. The goal is to enhance customer experience and ultimately raise the average sales per customer.

What is funny, is that Zappos has been recently bought buy Amazon, which is the leading retailers in terms of personal recommendations. As the merge hasn't been finalized, Zappos staff declared they were still operating individually and hence, could decide what they wanted on an operational stand point. But still, in terms of convergence, it doesn't really make sense, as Amazon is clearly the leader in the industry on this aspect. It is funny to compare with what Carrefour did not so long ago, establishing a contract with Publicis for its communication, forcing all its business units to switch for Publicis.

Anyways, what really matters is to see that Zappos is still pursuing customer service greatness, and as the company matures, it is getting equiped with the finest technologies to provide great customer relationship.

France: 60% des internautes adeptent du CtoC

le CtoC (customer to customer) est en train de devenir un axe majeur de la distribution en France. Ainsi, 60% des internautes ont soient achetés, soient vendus à un autre particulier. Cette statistique est fondamentale.

Nous sommes ainsi en train de passer d'une société de propriétaire, où les utilisateurs possèdent leurs biens, à une société d'utilisateur, où ce qui est important est l'utilisation du produit. On voit aussi un autre courant très important qui est le prêt d'objet ou la location via l'Internet.

A l'heure de la crise, où il est important de faire des choix pour conserver un pouvoir d'achat fort, les français raisonnent plus en terme d'utilisation que de propriété. Ainsi, pourquoi acheter une perceuse, alors qu'on ne l'utilisera en moyenne que deux fois dans sa vie?

Le CtoC, et les autres courants alternatifs de distribution vont modifier rapidement les pratiques des distributeurs.

• Ainsi, la Fnac a commencer à développer une activité de vente de produits d'occasions.
• Wall Mart aux Etats-Unis a développé une plateforme de petites annonces gratuites pour ses utilisateurs.
• Dell est la première société à faire des bénéfices sur Twitter, en écoutant les demandes sur ce média social (ce qu'on appelle le VRM, le vendor relationship management ou la relation client inversée).

On n'est qu'au début de cette révolution qui risque de devenir un axe déterminant de diversification et de consommation pour les distributeurs.

ix internautes français sur dix (60%) ont acheté ou vendu au moins un objet entre particuliers sur le web au cours des douze derniers mois, un moyen de recycler, payer moins cher, trouver des articles épuisés ou arrondir leurs fins de mois, selon un sondage publié lundi.

En 2008, ils étaient 56%. Si on prend également en compte les vide-greniers, 77% des personnes interrogées ont échangé des objets entre particuliers, selon le baromètre "C to C" (commerce entre particuliers) PriceMinister/La Poste réalisé par l'institut OpinionWay.

A l'achat, la part du commerce entre particuliers sur internet a passé un cap symbolique, se hissant à 51% contre 49% en 2008.

Un internaute sur cinq (21%) a acheté des livres sur la Toile, 14% y ont acquis des vêtements, et 13% des jeux vidéo. Le livre arrive également en tête des déclarations de vente sur internet (12%), suivi des DVD et VHS (8%) et des vêtements (8% également).

La principale raison évoquée pour vendre ou acheter sur le web, avant même le prix, est que "cela réduit le gaspillage, cela évite de jeter, c'est comme du recyclage": cet argument est avancé par 49% des personnes interrogées.

Ensuite, 41% relèvent que cela "revient moins cher à l'achat", 36% que c'est un moyen de dénicher des articles rares ou épuisés. Près d'un tiers (30%) y voient la possibilité d'augmenter leurs revenus. "La préoccupation budgétaire reste forte en ces temps de crise économique", commente l'étude.

Parmi les principaux freins à la vente sur la Toile figurent la peur de ne pas être payé (71%) et de devoir régler des frais de mise en vente (59%) ou une commission aux sites internet (55%). Un quart des personnes interrogées estiment que "c'est compliqué de faire un colis et de l'expédier", et 11% mettent en cause la qualité de l'acheminement, contre 17% un an plus tôt.

L'étude a été réalisée en ligne auprès d?un échantillon de 1.109 personnes, représentatif de la population des internautes français âgés de 18 à 65 ans, entre le 29 juin et le 7 juillet 2009.

Statistics Is Not Everything

CRM strategies get a lot of attentions of CEOs due to its capabilities to measure campaigns efficiency. Thanks to new customer relationship management tools, you are able to get clear pictures of the efficiency of your marketing programs, and what your customers' value is.

But this system is biased as multi channel distribution has become common nowadays. Business has become more and more complex. Now online retailers are opening stores like Dell, and also brick and mortar companies like Wall Mart are setting up online stores. Moreover, brands are also getting more and more online as Apple or Nike do with their concept stores.

Also, social communities have enable customers to speak about brands and their customer experience, which is valuable information that still need to be explore.

I have read not so long ago that customer to customer (CtoC) business is also growing, and we are going from an ownership society, where people owns things they use, to a user society, where the use primes to the ownership, and where renting and borrowing becomes more attractive than buying. 60% of French Internet users have at least bought or sold something online to another person.

Hence, it multiplies the number of information sources, which makes it complex to get clear stats about customers.

The utopia of knowing everything about your customer has probably gone away. Macy's has declared that it generated $50 billion thanks to its Online activities, either it is shopping online or getting traffic out of their websites, but was not able to explain exactly how they have figured it out.

Statistics is not everything

I wanted to correlate this fact with an article I found about basketball. Basketball is a sport about stats, where you can have a clear picture of the individual performance thanks to the number of points, rebounds, assists, blocks, or shot percentage a player had. There is also an indicator, called the PER (Player Efficiency Rating), that mixes all this factor to rank the best players in the game. Here is a table showing up the performance of the bests.

N#NomPER1Lebron James31.762Dwyane Wade30.463Chris Paul30.044Dwight Howard25.445Tim Duncan24.516Kobe Bryant24.467Brandon Roy24.348Tony Parker23.479Dirk Nowitzki23.2010Al Jefferson23.16

If you know a little about the NBA, you must know that Kobe Bryant is considered as one of the best player to have ever played, and one of the best right now. According to this table, Kobe would not even be in the top 3, but only the 6th player. Actually Kobe in his whole career would have never reached the score of 28, and never been part of the top 3, even when he's been named the MVP of the league last year.

The conclusion is that statistic is not the whole picture. Kobe Bryant's greatness go beyond his stats, but his capability to be a leader in the money time. Statistics can't measure the number of games he won by making the last shot, by cheering up his teammates, or by defending hard.

That is actually the reason why the Most Valuable Player (MVP) trophy doesn't reward the best player of the league, but the most valuable, the one that contributes the most to the team's success.

Customer relationship management should not be seen as a way to measure efficiency or to get accurate stats about its clients. It should be seen as a whole idea and will of a company to get superior customer service. A lot of companies doesn't own a loyalty reward program but provides superior customer service which leads to high revenues.

Hence, customer relationship management must be considered not only on an information system point of view, but also in terms of customer experience, which is the ultimate goal of such a strategy.

Rupert Murdoch to Remove His Sites From Google

In my opinion this video is about to revolutionize both the news industry and the Internet consumption of information. This video is an interview of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch discussing about his business on the Internet, and in particular, the close relationship the different news websites has with search engine.

We all know that the news industry is experiencing a great crisis since the arrival of blogs and the boom of Internet. Now information has become fast, complete and free, and hence it is difficult for newspapers company, Murdoch's core business, to explain why someone should pay for information.

Now, Murdoch explains 3 very important points:

1. No one owns a profitable news business on the Internet. Some influent bloggers or websites break even, or make little money, but no one makes actually profits. Murdoch admits that in overall, his constellation of newspapers website doesn't make a profit of their activities.
2. There is not enough advertisers in the world to set up a business modell that would create profits out of a news website. Advertisers are not milk cows, and a lot of web 2.O companies have forgotten that point. You might generate millions of visits, it doesn't mean you'll have advertiPublish Postsers that could pay you enough to generate a profitable activity.
3. Google brings you traffic, but it is not loyal readers that use Google to land on your pages. This is interesting on a customer relationship management point of view. Because they are occasional readers, there is little to expect in term of revenue generations, and hence, it is in Murdoch's mind impossible to create a business plan out of those occasional people. Actually, the newspaper industry thrived on people getting subscriptions. This customer base was securing the breaking even point of the companies. And now with the Internet it is difficult to forecast such a thing.

Hence, according to all this idea, Murdoch might decide to take his newspapers website out of the Google search engine results.

The main question is about monetization, and business model on the Internet. At the moment, it is hard to see where the news industry is heading to.

Old Fashion

Now Murdoch is also old school. I mean, the news industry has changed and you need to face it. Of course, google is a huge part of the change, but there is also the Instant web coming up with Twitter.

Now, I must admit that Murdoch is right at some point, it is important for people to realize the value of information, and that it costs money to bring content and editorial quality. I was at the Paris Video camp last month and monetizing content was one of the main issue. Because blogging, googling or Twitting lives out of this content that professional journalist gets.

I still believe that there is still some room for new business model for the news industry.

Here are some other interesting stats about news industry and Google:

• On a weekly basis Google and Google news are the top traffic providers for WSJ.com account for over 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic.
• Over 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are “new” users who haven’t visited the domain in the last 30 days.
• Twitter and Facebook sent 4% of US visits to News and Media sites in October 2009. (via @Hitwise_US)
• The percentage of upstream traffic from Facebook and Twitter to News and Media sites is up 490% year-over-year.

First Moment Of Truth: In-store Marketing Beats Traditionnal Advertising

This post is linked to the one I have already written about the First Moment Of Truth. This topic is very important to me as I am working the retail industry. A new US study shows that "nearly a third (32 percent) third of the 999 shoppers polled online in March said in-store marketing is very effective. Only 27 percent said the same about ads living outside of the store."

The survey, which is part three of the "Gone in 2.3 Seconds: Capturing Shoppers with Effective In-Store Triggers Series," found that the shopping experience is crucial for marketers. Sixty-nine percent of those polled called the in-store experience a “make or break” scenario. While 65 percent of shoppers are making lists, brand decisions are still being made at the store according to 60 percent of respondents. End-aisle displays are the most engaging according to 70 percent of those polled followed by merchandising displays (62 percent) and department signage (58 percent). Ceiling banners and overhead mobiles have the least impact. Shelf strips (55 percent) and shelf blades (50 percent) have become more important especially among the Gen X and Gen Y crowds who feel the more information the better, per the report. Overall, women and Gen Y were most influenced by in-store marketing efforts. "Understanding high potential shopper strike zones has become increasingly critical given the intensified battle for consumer loyalty and share of mind in-store," said D’Anna Hawthorne, strategy director at Miller Zell, a retail consultancy. The report was conducted by the National Research Network on Miller Zell's behalf.

In-retail marketing is mostly underrated, but in the grocery retail industry it is one of the most powerful tool you could use. Of course, out of the store advertising is very important to generate leads and traffic in store, but growth of revenues comes from in store customers' decision making process. And new technologies could have a great impact in helping customers to make their decision.

Will Twitter Kill Emailing?

French Internet guru Henri Kaufman has been the first one to express to me this idea: Twitter will kill emails. Now this is the very serious Wall Street Journal that writes about it.

Micro blogging, Twittering, or Instant web, whatever you want to call it represents indeed a revolution. Freshness becomes the most fundamental value of the information. That's clear. Since I am twittering, and even if I own a Blackberry which technically allows me to read my emails at any time, my email accounts get stacked and I spend my week ends on deleting emails I don't even have the time to answer. With Twitter, if the information has gone to the second page of your thread, you are over with it. And it is fine, as it is the concept of it.

Little wonder that while email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster. In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

"The whole idea of this email service isn't really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks," says Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

That can make it harder to determine the importance of various messages. When people can more easily fire off all sorts of messages—from updates about their breakfast to questions about the evening's plans—being able to figure out which messages are truly important, or even which warrant a response, can be difficult. Information overload can lead some people to tune out messages altogether.

Such noise makes us even more dependent on technology to help us communicate. Without software to help filter and organize based on factors we deem relevant, we'd drown in the deluge.

Enter filtering. In email land, consumers can often get by with a few folders, if that. But in the land of the stream, some sort of more sophisticated filtering is a must.

It might take some time before the mass market use and apprehend the new medium. There are still a lot of people that has never heard about Twitter, or even worse,hundreds of thousands people that registered but have never understood how to use it.

But I firmly believe Twitter, or maybe more the Instant web, will for sure change the face of how people interract online.

Les dernières tendances du Web 2.0 par Loic Lemeur

Voici une vidéo de Loic Lemeur exposant les dernières tendances du web notamment l'Instant Web, et les conséquences pour les marques.

Uncertainty More Convincing

Experts are suppose to provide you clear answers within their expertise field. Since they are supposed to master their art, it is hard to believe that they would doubt about their own concept or strategy.

Nevertheless, it seems that experts are the most convincing while expressing uncertainty. Indeed, Whether it’s a person without established expertise in a given domain expressing very high certainty, or a person with clearly established expertise in a domain expressing low certainty," Tormala said, "the inconsistency is surprising. It draws people in. And as long as the arguments in a message are reasonably strong, being drawn in leads to more persuasion."

Tormala and Karmarkar studied this issue by giving consumers what purported to be customer reviews for a new restaurant. "Restaurant reviews provided a good setting for this research," Tormala said. "Like other consumer topics, they’re subjective, but there also are traditional markers of quality."
He said such attributes as ambience, service, and taste of the food can be described with enough detail to let people understand the reviewer's perspective, but still reach their own conclusions about whether the restaurant would be suited to their tastes.
Participants in one experiment read a favorable review of a new restaurant called "Bianco’s." Across experimental conditions, the main part of the review contained the same core comments about Bianco's, comments the researchers had pre-tested on a sampling of readers to make sure they were strong. In the main study, some participants were told that the reviewer was a renowned food critic who often contributed to a major regional newspaper; others were told that the reviewer was a network administrator at a local community college who kept a personal web journal — and normally ate fast food.
In addition to varying the supposed source of the review, the researchers varied the level of certainty expressed in it. In the high-certainty recommendation, the review was titled "Bianco's — a confident 4 out of 5," and the author expressed certainty about the quality of the food and the restaurant twice in the review (saying, for example, "Having eaten there for dinner, I can confidently give Bianco's a rating of 4 [out of 5] stars"). In the low-certainty recommendation, the title of the review was "Bianco's — a tentative 4 out of 5" and the author expressed uncertainty about these same points (for example, "Having eaten there only once, I don’t have complete confidence in my opinion, but I suppose would give Bianco's a rating of 4 [out of 5] stars").
"We find that when the regular, everyday person is extremely certain, that’s surprising to readers,' Tormala said. 'Conversely, when the expert is not so certain, that's surprising. In both cases, surprise increases readers’ interest in and involvement with the review, which is essentially a persuasive message, and this promotes persuasion. So non-experts get more attention and can have more impact when they express certainty in their messages. Experts, in contrast, get more attention and can have more impact when they express uncertainty."

Maybe uncertainty makes the expert more human, and hence, it makes it more real. It is impossible even for an expert to be right at 100%. As human sciences like business, sociology or communication are not mathematical sciences, there is always a part of unknown, which actually makes it understandable that there is uncertainty.

Le client captif

Il y a des moments où le client se trouve en situation d'attente, ou bien dans un environement clos où il n'a pas la possibilité de "s'échaper". Il devient client captif. C'est le cas par exemple lorsqu'il se trouve en voiture pour un long trajet, dans une fil d'attente ou encore dans une pièce d'attente.

Ces moments peuvent devenir des moments de communication privilégiées par les marques, même s'il existe un fort risque d'intrusion. L'idée est donc de proposer une communication de type divertissement.

Quelques exemples auquels j'ai pensé hier matin en allant au cabinet de radiologie:

• Une borne de téléchargement gratuite de film
• Une console de jeu vidéo en accès libre
• Distribution de produit alimentaire

L'intérêt réside aussi dans le fait où, à ce moment précis, le client n'est pas assujetti à la communication de concurrents potentiels. Son attention est donc grande, et c'est pour cela qu'il y a des opportunités de communication lors de ces moments où le client est captif.

Dannon Launches Dannonomics

I have been working with a friend of mine on a CRM project including a loyalty reward program for a cosmetic brand. The main focus is that the company doesn't own its distribution channels, and hence, it is quite difficult to set up a reward program. How do you keep a track of your customers' purchases?

Indeed, I don't know many brands that set up a loyalty reward program without owning their own channel. Meanwhile I have found out that Dannon has launched for its 90th anniversary a loyalty reward program called Dannonomics. Hence I have decided to pay a close look at it, to see how they have succeeded in knowing their customers' consumption.

The trick might seem simple, in terms of company's process, but a little bit acward on the customer point of view: The customer cuts the barcodes of its products and then send it by mail, in order to receive their coupons.

It might work for a food company like Dannon, which is already used to generate contests with this process, but for other companies out of the grocery shopping industry, I don't see this choice that obvious.

Dannonomics actually is not what we can call a "customer relationship management" program, because it is a one shot strategy, and doesn't consider the relationship on a long term. Though it will provide pretty good data about the success of the campaign.

I have had the chance to speak with the French CRM director of Danone to talk about their customer relationship management strategy, and did not seem that obvious they were very active on the topic, and creative. It was simply based on sending newsletters and magazines to people that registered online.

Now, I'd like to know if some of you knows about some brands that don't own their retail channels that have set up powerful loyalty reward programs. I'd like to share with you examples.

Les supermarchés en ligne: une alternative écologique

Le commerce électronique et le développement durable font souvent bon ménage puisqu'ils représentent les 2 tendances fondamentales de développement à court et moyen terme. J'ai récupérer un article de la FEVAD sur le site d'oxatis, une société proposant des solutions de e-commerce. Cet article explique que les supermarchés électroniques, tels que Auchan Direct, seraient des solutions plus écologiques de faire les courses alimentaires.

"Passer par internet aurait notamment pour effet de réduire par 8 les émissions de CO2. Ainsi, en 2007, et sur la base de 446 000 livraisons, les clients de Telemarket devraient permettre d’éviter l'émission de 6 583 tonnes de CO2. A titre de comparaison, pour absorber une telle quantité en rejets, il faudrait l'équivalent de 449 hectares de forêt, soit plus de la moitié du bois de Boulogne.
Et si l'achat par internet était finalement un bon moyen de consommer « écolo » ?

Pour les auteurs de l’étude, le caractère écologique de l’achat à distance fait peu de doute. Selon eux, «la livraison à domicile présente des bénéfices environnementaux spectaculaires pour la société». Voilà en tout cas un beau de sujet de réflexion sur lequel la Fevad travaille actuellement dans le cadre d’un projet d’étude consacré à l’impact du e-commerce et de la vente à distance sur l’environnement et le développement durable, dont les résultats seront connus courant 2008."

Cette étude date de 2007 et il est vrai que j'en avais jamais entendu parler avant aujourd'hui. Les sociétés proposant de faire leurs courses en ligne sont certainement encore loin d'avoir une rentabilité suffisante pour se développer rapidement à court terme, mais montre qu'elle possède des avantages aussi en terme environnemental.

Est ce que vous faites vos courses en ligne? Quels sont les avantages que vous percevez? Quels sont les inconvénients? Le sujet m'intéresse énormément et je serai ravi d'en discuter.