Last week I spoke at the Electronic Retailing Association's annual Mid-Winter Conference about Web 2.0. From the conversations I had there, a few things were pretty clear…
One is that retailers are getting absolutely hammered on price, and it’s mainly because of the transparency of the web. In response, they’re cutting prices. Can anyone say “death spiral?”
The other is that there’s this interest/fear dynamic that’s prevalent among online retailers regarding social networking and Web 2.0. The session was packed with marketers that wanted to understand what they could do to better understand, and hopefully leverage, some of the new Web 2.0 tools in their marketing plans.
The topic of my talk was that while Web 2.0 is making it more challenging for marketers in all verticals, not just retail (because with 70M blogs in the blogosphere, you’re kidding yourself if you think you’re still in control of your brand), it also can hold the key to building brand...
