Barnes and Noble : 10% Of Sales Coming From The Internet

Internet is becoming more and more strategic for traditional retailers. Hence, during the crisis we are experiencing, most of the sales growth is coming from online activities, as ecommerce is still growing while retails are impacted by the economical downturn.

Barnes and Noble’s Internet activities count now for 10% of the whole sales. Online sales have been boosted by the release of its electronic book “NOOk”, a Kindel-like handset. It seems that this electronic book seems to be a promising market as great companies are launching their versions.

This article simply shows out once more that Internet is a very important tool for traditional retailers which are seeking for growth, in mature and highly competed markets.

Les cafetiers à la recherche d'un nouveau modèle économique

Les cafetiers français sont depuis des années, de manière régulière, touchée par la baisse de consommation du tabac. Celle-ci est générée par la hausse du prix du tabac, mais aussi par les campagnes anti tabac qui se multiplient. Ainsi, beaucoup d'entre eux ont du mal à survivre.

Mais le réel problème est que les cafetiers doivent faire face à une remise en question complète de leur modèle économique. Ainsi, il est évidemment impossible d'attendre un inversement de tendance, qui permettrait une croissance de leurs revenus issus du tabac. Il faut donc trouver un moyen de garder ses points de vente rentable, surtout que pour la plupart d'entre eux ils ont la chance de posséder des emplacements privilégiés en centre ville.

Moi je crois beaucoup au modèle "Starbucks". Un concept fort, qui véhicule plus un style de vie, une atmosphère, que la simple consommation d'un produit, qui plus est basique. Seulement, afin de pouvoir faire de la sorte, il faut que la profession se regroupe autour de corporation, pourquoi pas un système de centrale d'achat ou de commerce associé, de type Leclerc, afin de pouvoir d'une part améliorer leurs conditions d'achat, mais aussi proposer une force marketing pour pouvoir se différencier sur un marché plus que mature.

Maintenant, les cafés ont une longue tradition encrée dans la culture française, et je pense qu'il serait facile de mettre en valeur l'aspect social de ces lieux, afin de pouvoir recommencer à générer du traffic.

Maintenant, il est sûr que les buralistes et cafetiers se doivent d'accepter ces profonds changements, au risque de disparaître définitivement.

Carrefour lance Promolibre: Ou bien le début du marketing one to one dans la grande distribution

Carrefour est source de nombreuses innovations dans le domaine de la grande distribution. Il y a plusieurs dizaines d'années, il avait lancé les produits libres, soit le premier concept de marque de distributeur. Le concept a tellement bien marché que maintenant les MDD représentent dans la plupart des familles de produit un leader de categorie. Aujourd'hui, Carrefour souhaite innové avec son programme de fidélité en lançant PromoLibre.

Il faut bien reconnaitre que dans le domaine de la grande distribution les programmes de fidélisation sont souvent bien triste et peu différenciant. En effet, n'importe qui peut en posséder une, les offres et les média de communication ne sont absoluments pas personnalisés. Il suffit simplement de s'inscrire à une Newsletter de Carrefour ou de Auchan, pour voir qu'on nous propose une pression très forte et peu d'effort de segmentation.

Maintenant, le système de Carrefour semble simple: On laisse au consommateur choisir certains produits, ceux qu'il utilise le plus, afin de lui proposer des promotions sur ceux ci.

le consommateur choisit les produits qu’il souhaite acheter en promotion en fonction de ses envies, de ses besoins ou de son budget. A partir du 23 février, l’enseigne proposera ainsi chaque semaine aux porteurs de la carte Carrefour - qui sont actuellement 17 millions - de choisir, en alimentaire, leurs trois produits préférés, qu’il s’agisse de marques nationales ou de marques distributeurs, le moins cher leur étant remboursé. S’ils en achètent six, l’enseigne leur remboursera les deux produits les moins chers. En non-alimentaire, la règle diffèrera légèrement : les clients pourront choisir librement dans le rayon "PromoLibre" le produit qu’ils souhaitent acheter et obtenir une réduction de 20%.

Maintenant, le challenge est de rentre cette communication simple pour le consommateur, et aussi de le mettre en place de manière opérationnelle. Je pense que ce système de "PromoLibre" est effectivement une avancée majeur et un système différenciant pour la carte de fidélité Carrefour.

Et vous, qu'en pensez-vous?

Next Generation Kart's to boost retailer's CRM programs

Most retailer's CRM programs are based on membership and loyalty reward programs. These little plastic cards allow retailers to geyt data from customers and hence have a more efficient commercial offer, to boost sales.

But there are three different timings when these programs trigger the purchase decision making of customers:
- Prior to have entered the outlet: thanks to advertising on brochures, mailings, internet websites, emails and more and more often cell phones.
- During grocery shopping thanks to end of the aisle display, special offer stoppers, and so on.
- After the sales process. At the cashier coupons are given based on the previous purchase to push some cross selling or upselling techniques. If someone gets a
Coffee machine, you could give them coupons for the appropriate coffee caps.

But soon, we'll have smart karts that will boost even more those programs. Auchan already proposes a self scanning method: they give you at the entrance of the store a scanner and let you scan your products along your shopping. Then you don't go through a cashier, but to a specific desk where you pay.

Thanks to these new scanner, it provides data during your shopping process. And hence instead of proposing a cross selling or an upsell when you are done with shopping, you could actually gets it during the process, in a way more efficient manner.

Now this technique must be taken into consideration with caution. Indeed, the shopping experience shouldn't be packed up with a lot of those type of interference, because that would result in an horrible threshold. But I believe this would allow retailer to be more reactive and interactive with their promotion techniques.

What do you think about it? Do you already have examples about these systems?
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Facebook As A Leading Traffic Generator

Social media has now become a main stream, and hence we can now see how it has changed the way we consume the Internet. On a business prospective, I have found this article which is pretty interesting. According to the results of a Compete.com research, Facebook.com has generated more visits on main websites like AOL or Yahoo than Google.

This shows that indeed Facebook has a huge potential in terms of generating leads on the web. The only think is that I believe Facebook hasn’t been able to unlish this fantastic potential. As I have spoken with several announcers on Facebook, they seem kind of deceived by their results. I believe a lot of people are trying to figure out how to make the best out of their social media investment. Also, I believe it is difficult to control the traffic generation on Facebook. Most of the traffic generated is done by word of mouth of users, and hence, it is pretty difficult to have a clear view of Facebook campaign’s efficiency.

Now we certainly understand why Google is so eager to make of Google Buzz a success. That would also be very interesting to see how Twitter can become an important way to generate visits on a website. I believe that these new media are changing the way we use the Internet, and hence, it will change the way we advertise on the web.

Facebook now counts for 12.4% of the traffic generation for the movie related websites, 2nd in the category, and samewise, 12.7% for the video websites.

Referral Marketing: Character and Competency More Important Than Customer Experience

This is a very interesting article I found on the blog of Evan Misner, founder of the BNI, and expert in referral marketing.

just finished a survey of more than 12,000 businesspeople from all around the world on the subject of networking. One of the questions we asked the respondents was “Which of the following is most important to you when referring business to others?” The choices were:

• Knowing a person’s character.
• Knowing a person’s level of competency.
• Using the person’s product or service myself.
• Knowing a person’s success.

Not surprisingly, “knowing a person’s character” ranked No. 1 in the survey. Interestingly, “using the product or service myself” ranked third out of the four choices! This is important to understand when building your own personal network of people referring you because it shows that people are definitely looking at more than just the quality of your products and services when they think about referring you to other people.
Often, we think that the best source of referrals must be our clients, customers or patients. Although they definitely are a good source, they are not our only source. In fact, based on this survey, personally using and experiencing another person’s product or services before referring business to that person was not as important to the respondents as other factors.
What this means to you is–you need to build your credibility with people who know you (whether they’ve used your business or not). If people trust your character and competency, they are likely to refer you regardless of whether they’ve actually used your products or services.

Now if you are considering a customer relationship management point of view, this study is very interesting. Indeed, maybe your best lead of prospects might not be your actual clients, but some people that have had a good impression after a commercial, or visiting your website. And you must take advantage of this feeling, this state of mood, to drive the buzz or so. This might be actually the reason why so many companies are interested by buzz marketing campaigns, to spread the word of mouth.

That also shows that branding, and especially the story that you tell people about your brand, is a valuable asset, that might trigger people to become your customers.

What do you think about it?

Google Changing into a Multinational Company

Google as A Trailblazer
Google has evolved a lot this past decade. Since it has started its business, revolutionizing the way information is consumed and boosting the Internet use, Google has always been a trailblazers in most the activities it set.

Even though it came into a populated market, like for instance the email account market, it changed users behaviour, by empowering emails account with extensive memory capacity, a great search engine, and an easy way to connect with other services, like instant messaging.

But now the Internet market is becoming mature, especially in the 1.0 aspect, where Google is a leader, with its search engine. Now, in order to seek for fast growth, they must go on some unknown market, and most of the time, already battle competition.

Google Expanding In New Markets
This is what happened with Google Android, where the smartphone market was already existing with major actors like Nokia, Blackberry, and that has already experienced a major change with the arrival of the Iphone.

Now I have seen that Google is launching Google buzz. The idea is to create a new Google experience, that will be empowered by instant information, usable whenever needed, especially thanks to mobile devices. The main idea is to counterattack Facebook and Twitter, which main interest is based on instant and close information.

But to be honest with you, I am not sure once more Google buzz will encounter a great success. Here are the main reasons why:
Google is entering a market far from its core know how. Google knows how to search and display information, that is for sure. But Google has never been a social platform.
Google is entering a fast growing market, yes, but it is facing companies that are already well settled on it, especially Facebook. What really matters in this market, is to get the critical mass that will allow the company to become a leader. The more people are using your social service, the more interesting it is becoming. And hence, if you are late, it is difficult to get back. And Google is late for sure.

Using traditional advertising for those kind of services has never shown any kind of success. Hence, Microsoft have tried several times to market products with TV and billboards advertising, but it doesn’t seem to work, especially to convince opinion leaders that play a key role in those kind of launches.

Google Adopting New Traditional Global Companies Processes
Actually, Google has become so huge, that it has totally changed the way it does business. Hence, it becomes to have global companies processes, even with marketing. Now Google to launch Google chrome in France used a massive billboard campaign in the metro, they start TV advertising. The problem that might come with this mid age crisis, is their ability to keep their pioneer mindset, and to keep going on with innovation, and not “fake innovation”, as mature international companies” often do.

What do you think about it? Do you really believe that Google has changed?

Could Twitter become a great VRM tool ?

I like the idea of Vendor Relationship Management. The first time I heard about it, it made so much sense that I knew it had a bright future ahead of it. Vendor relationship management aims to reverse CRM, meaning that the customer claims its need of a product, and companies need to get in contact with him.

This looks like too very traditional business to business process:
• Calls for tender: This is when a company sets requirements of its needs, and hence allow companies to develop an appropriate solution that will match these requirements.
• Reverse auctions: This is a time where the buyer sorted out a short list of potential sellers. Then, these competitions participate to a reverse auction, where in a limited time, they are going to battle to provide the best price to the customer.

The ultimate goal for customers is to get a product that suits their needs and at the best price. For the company, it is to focus its commercial and marketing effort on the “first moment of truth”, the moment where the customer has decided to purchase the product. This VRM solution is suitable for long decision making process, such as buying electronics, real estate, cars, or mobile phone plans.

Now the question is how could we set up a VRM process. What tool could you use? I believe Twitter could be a great way for customers to reach companies and exposes their needs. Indeed, more and more brands have created Twitter accounts, and dedicated some community management effort to interact with people.

Hence, a Twitter empower with great search engines capabilities could become the ultimate VRM tool, allowing customers to reach the largest number of companies able to suit its needs.

What do you think about CRM? Do you think it has a bright future ahead?

Mobile Banking

Mobile banking has a bright future ahead of it. As Internet has already revolutionized the bank market, by allowing customers to access their bank account and to make action at anytime, it has changed the way customers use their money. Now that Internet is going mobile, and that cell phones are getting smarter and smarter, empowered by Internet and applications, mobile banking is going to create a new revolution.

- The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com) and its official research partner, Luth Research (www.luthresearch.com), today released highlights from the latest US Consumer Briefing, a monthly survey of U.S. adult consumers about their mobile marketing behaviors and opinions. Available exclusively to MMA members, the new survey shows that 17 percent of all adults currently use mobile banking, with interest levels suggesting that usage will grow to 22 percent within the next year.

The usage of mobile banking uses three media:

• mobile Web browser (11 percent of respondents),
• SMS (8 percent),
• Applications (5.5 percent)

I believe mobile banking could substentially grow by developing applications adapted to customers's needs. When I see what mint in the US has been able to accomplish with personnal banking and the Internet technology, I believe that the mint concept could be great on mobile devices. Hence according to the survey, half of the respondents are interested in such solutions.

Also, mobile banking might be a great way to earn marketshares for pure players, like boursorama in France, or ING, which doesn't own retails, but could be by this tool constantly in touch with customers.

My Thoughts About Dauphine's Master Prices

Lately the university of Paris Dauphine has claimed they were about to raise the prices of certain of their masters, which price range would start from 400 € to 4 000 €. This might seem cheap to most of you, especially the US audience that is used to spend tons of money to access the best university program.

Dauphine the exception

Now Dauphine is an elite school. Certain of its programs, like Finance or management, are among the best in Europe. It developed a reputation of excellence as several executives of global companies came from this school. But Dauphine is not like any business school. It is a public school, based on the French public university system. It has always had a particular status. Hence, since its creation in 60s, it had a specefic status that gave it more money, but also some privileges like selection processes other universities would not be able to use.

But Dauphine has a great challenge to face. As the globalization process speeds up, the competition is going international for universities. And owning the best professors and phds requires money and infrastructure. This is the reason why Dauphine is looking for new ways to increase its revenues, and therefore to provide the best to students.

Hence the main goal of this raise in scholarship aims to recruit professors, to boost the research effort.

I have studied in Paris Dauphine and I am proud of it. I believe Dauphine has a bright future in front of it. And actually, this raise of the cost of Paris Dauphine remains acceptable. Dauphine's master, if they cost 4000 € they are still among the most affordable ones, and it might even help those masters to increase its values by improving classes and infrastructure.

And you, what do you think about it?

Brand equity and brand story

I am currently readin the fascinating Christian Salmon's book named Storytelling. He explains the art of storytelling and how important it is in nowadays societies. Hence, storytelling is the art of creating a story around a topic, in order to help making it better, and therefore to sell it.

What is interesting, is that the author considers it is no longer enough to own a great brand equity, built on powerful advertising campaigns and great marketing budgets. What really matter, even more than the brand by itself, is the story associated with.

This is the reason why for example Apple is not the most proefficient company in term of TV advertising. It just has created a myth, a story about Apple and Apple's users, that makes it way different than Microsoft. As Apple has since the beginning inforced its image with this story, of excellence, of innovation, and of a niche market, they have been able to take a great advantage upon Microsoft.

Therefore, while managing a brand, you can no longer rely on a great baseline, nor on a powerful logo to expose the brand, you need to build and tell a comprehensive story that vehicles dream and how great your brand is.

I have just started the book, but I will probably gives you insight along the way, as the topic fascinates me.

Carrefour Targeting India

The Indian market is a fascinating one, especially for retailers. The numerous population added to the fast economic dynamism makes it a great target for fast growth. Hence, group Carrefour, the second largest retailer in the world, is aiming the Indian market. Carrefour already is one of the leader of the Brazilian, Chinese market, and after having failed in Russia, a country where Auchan is already well settled, CEO Lars Olofsson declared during the Davos world forum his will to pursue the Indian market.

I believe this will be very interesting, but risky at the same time, as the Indian government is very conservative, and therefore it will be difficult to get in the market.

Sébastien Loeb et la publicité: surmédiatisation

Sébastien Loeb est l'un des plus grands sportifs français sans aucun doute. Il a été multiple fois champion du monde de sa discipline, les courses automobiles de rallies. Maintenant qu'il a acquis ce niveau d'excellence dans son sport, il est normal qu'il essaie de monétiser ses qualités de gagnant via des contrats publicitaires et de sponsoring.

Maintenant, je ne suis pas sûr que la façon dont il gère cette nouvelle notoriété, que j'estime fragile auprès du grand public soit la meilleure. Effectivement, depuis quelques semaines, de nombreux spots publicitaires mettant en scène la star sont apparu sur nos écrans télévisés. Notamment, Citroën (ce qui me parait normal, puisqu'il court avec ce constructeur), Allianz et Mennen.

Mais pour moi, le fait qu'il y est autant de publicité avec le même acteur nuit à la fois à Sébastien Loeb, qui se trouve sur exposé médiatiquement, alors qu'il n'a pas encore eu l'occasion de réellement établir son image auprès du grand public, mais aussi aux marques, qui à travers le personnage et les valeurs incarnés par Loeb (la victoire, l'excellence automobile, la virilité) se trouve en conflit avec des marques à intérêts divergents. Ce qui est rare a de la valeur, et là, Sébastien Loeb n'est pas rare.

De même, Sébastien Loeb ne parle dans aucune des trois publicités. Comme si Sébastien Loeb n'était pas capable de communiqué, sur ces valeurs que les publicités souhaitent utilisés. Il se trouve, notamment pour Allianz et Citroën, dans une position de poupée sans âme.

Je pense qu'avant de se lancer ainsi dans le grand bain médiatique, il aurait du se concentrer sur sa capacité à vendre Citroën, son constructeur et son vrai coeur d'expertise, et développer son côté "bankable", avant de répondre à diverses solicitations, peut être plus difficile à porter.

Et vous, que pensez vous de ces spots?

Time To Market Mobile Advertising

The mobile revolution is on the way. It has been a while experts have pictured a bright future for mobile advertising, but different aspects made it difficult to rocket:

• Mobile formats are very different, upon the operating system the device use (Blackberry, Windows Pocket, Symbian, Android, among others)
• The size and type of the screen
• The way to see the information (application, website, mobile site, and so on).
• The navigation system: keyboard, ball like Blackberry, tactile technology...
• The numerous number of actors willing to benefit from the new market, between agencies, advertisers, mobile network companies and so on.

But this year, it seems it will be good. The New York Times believes that the growth of Apple and Google, with its power to create applications and innovation in the market, will give a boost to a minor industry.

Now one of the reason it remains difficult to advertise on cell phones is the disruption risk. Cell phones are a very personnal device, and each advertising program could reach a threshold fast.

Also, I believe that the application ideas, enhancing customer experience and customer relationship management (CRM) potential is a great way to use it. Now, of course, editorial content like online news site and blogs could be leverage, by providing advertising at a specific format.

We can expect a lot of innovation within next months on this market. And I really believe it will be a great year for mobile advertising.

The Ipad Presentation In Less Than 180 seconds

I found this video on the web about Steve Jobs'presentation of the Ipad. Of course, as it is introduced in the video, it is supposed to be funny. It selected only the highlights when Steve Jobs says his product is gorgious. But it is also a great example on how to use positive vocabular to tune up a presentation.

Steve Jobs has always loved to qualify his products of amazing, spectacular and so on. And by using this vocab, and because he repeats it, people tends to agree, and he creates a magical effect. He is able to boost the audience by that, and actually, I believe this is a great example that great presentator use positive words to drive enthusiasm.

Walmart Changes Its Organization To Focus on Ecommerce

Walmart has recently decided to focus its strategy on the Internet. While Carrefour’s CEO Lars Oloffson declared he is seeking for a partnership with an ecommerce leader to play a leader role in this market, Walmart is sure of its strength while speaking of online business. They have reset their organisation to focus on the ecommerce strategy.

Indeed, as the Financial Times article says, Walmart has a clear advantage upon its main competitor Amazon, as it owns a large number of retails settled all around the US.

One of the key figure of this article is actually that currently around 40 per cent of its US business is delivered to stores for pick up under its “site to store” service, which it sees as also augmenting in the future the development of smaller format stores.

The electronic goods market is clearly supported by the growth of online commerce, and therefore, there is no surprise traditional retailers must adapt their bid. Moreover, the multichannel trend is becoming more and more a challenge for both brick and mortar and pure players. Each of them need both a strong online presence and a real retail. This is also the reason why Carrefour have faith in a partnership with a pure player, as Carrefour could become a great asset for a e-retailer, to propose in store deliveries.

It is therefore determined to create a powerful ecommerce platform which would be adapted to the different local markets.

Social Media To Manage Customer Complains

Social Media gives a great powers to users, allowing them to broadcast any kind of problems they experienced with a brand. Before the arrival of social media, it was difficult for customers to be listened by companies as they had to form customer associations to have a chance to be read by a company and taken into considerations. Now with social media, any individual has the chance to make noises.

Therefore, you may expect an increase into customer complains via this new medium. There are two main ways to react about it:
You don’t want to interact with it. This is what most companies would do. As they are afraid of what they don’t know, meaning having a clear interaction with customers, they would rather ignore it to focus on the same old mass media to hide the growing word of mouth on line.
You could decide to monitor this feedback, and try to analyze it for better use. You should take this new trend as an opportunity to improve your products, your customer relationship management. Facing customer complains is the best way to avoid major problems that could cause you much problems.

I like the concept of enterprise feedback management, solutions that aims to get feedback from people whenever they get in touch with the brand, either by phone, in store or on the web. These comprehensive solutions are very interesting, and they should also focus on social media, because as a matter of fact it might be the best way to interact with customers.

Twitter To Order: A New Way To Make Business With Twitter

Pizza restaurants like Pizza Hut have recently launched their online ordering service. The idea allows restaurants to be more productive, as they don’t need someone on the phone to get and type in the system the orders. It is directly set into the production line.

But I was wondering if it was possible to get such a system with Twitter. Indeed, instant messaging is becoming more and more popular, and there is no questions that Twitter is one of the leading service. Twitter will also enables people to order on mobile devices (Twitter is used 30% of the time on mobile handheld).

I believe we could send a Tweet like @pizzahut with the name of the product, and then it could be produced. It could also be delivered thanks to the GPS location of the person. Either the IP if speaking about a laptop or a desktop, or the GPS chip if on a cell phone.

Now the challenge would be to set a payment system that would secure the transaction while tweeting. This is a great challenge because Twitter doesn’t have any expertise in this field. But it might actually a great source of revenue, to get commissions out of financial flows over Twitter.

Actually it reminds me of the service of Blippy, that proposes to link your credit card to a twitter like system where you would send a tweet whenever you purchase something. I also know people that have been working for virtualized moneys, which could also be a solution.

Anyways, I think that ordering via Twitter could represent a great opportunity for:
Customers: It would be a fast and easy way to order things from the everyday life
Twitter: It would be a new monetization opportunity for the service
Companies: It would probably creates new possibilities to cut production costs, and maybe trigger more sales by easing the ordering process.

What do you think about it? Do you think it is possible to implement such a service?

Social Media engagement to replace customer loyalty cards.

Social media is a customer relationship management medium. It is in its DNA. Allowing people to speak about brands, and interact with others gives to CRM program a brand new way to think. Now some people believe that social media engagement could replace customer loyalty cards.

Customer loyalty cards are indeed not used as they should, or at least companies are fighting to leverage the full potential. A loyalty reward program implies to create a service dedicated to data mining, to manage the information systems dedicated to it, and also people to create the appropriate message to the appropriate customer. And it is not as easy as it seems. Especially, mastering a loyalty reward programs requires a learn through experience process that could become longer than expected.

Now loyalty cards have been developed a while ago. About 20 years, and it might be the time to think about some new ways. I was reading not so long ago that companies like Directgroup and Prylos are thinking about using the mobile phone to replace the plastic gear. I believe they are right about that.
There are also a great potential in the digital ID concept: You could use your Facebook profile to use as your loyalty reward management system.

The benefit of the fan and follower systemtic is quite obvious…- You become a fan and/or follower when a brand becomes of interest for YOU as a customer- You become a fan and/or follower of your favorite brand when YOU are in a purchase process- You can check status updates on sales, discounts and promotions when YOU need them (not when the company wants to sell more products)

But in the end, it is very different to use a social media to interact with customers and drive sales. Customer loyalty reward program provides a great way for companies to analyse data.

A relationship between a customer and a brand must go both ways. While the customer gets discounts, the company gets data. And that is the key. Getting data from social software about customers behaviour is very difficult. To link a Facebook fan and its purchase in a store is nearly impossible.

I don’t think we can mix both ideas.