Vijay Dandapani

Mobile wallets have been heralded for the past several years as a paradigmatic change in payment technology. While new technology that was to bring it closer to fruition has been continually announced the empirical evidence for traction is thin at best. That does not seem to deter retailers and merchants as more dollars pour into ventures such as MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange) announced last month.

The foregoing "innovations", however,  seem to have left most consumers cold with a majority choosing to hold on to their traditional wallets. The Wall Street Journal has a remarkable story on how the "owner of Mini's Cupcakes in Salt Lake City installed a device that can accept mobile payments" for her customers to be able to pay for their sweet treats with a smartphone instead of cash or plastic. In over...

The website Financial Channel reports that a recent survey "released by Hampton Hotels uncovered that one in three Americans (33 percent) claims they are a "completely different person" on the weekends than they are during the week.   The survey, which delves into consumers' weekend mindset, shows that more positive, outgoing and friendly personality traits emerge for most Americans during the weekend.  The headline as well as the survey's findings are reasonably informative if not hugely revelatory. That people tend to let their hair down on weekends is something that has been known ever since the idea of a Sabbath day was mooted.  It is not clear what actionable information can be had from the results of this survey. What remains as the holy grail for marketers is the ability to track...

Revving up the rate of internal change to cope with the external rate of change is often touted as a key to business success with  continually evolving consumer preferences. Companies in a range of industries are using big data to optimize inputs that are likely to effect change. While big data is not a new phenomenon as the Wall Street Journal notes the means to manipulate data to produce meaningful solutions for management remains at a formative stage.

The foregoing is about to change as Cloudtimes per a post on the "future of big data". The article notes  that "property and casualty firms are also taking advantage of predictive modeling in their underwriting, quoting, actuarial and pricing workflows, risk management, customer relationship management...

 The latest Gallup Business Journal's lead article based on recent research in the field suggests that senior executives are "leaving money on the table". The primary reason per Gallup is that "companies measure employee and customer satisfaction without much to show for it. That's because their surveys -- whether one magic question for customers or 100-plus-item monstrosities for employees -- often focus on the rational and exclude the emotional." The productivity and profits oriented journal terms the rewards to be derived from a better focus on the emotional aspect of customer interaction as an""engagement premium" or, essentially, profits that are to be had were customers to be engaged emotionally.

Gallup's conclusions derive from an assignment for a large financial services firm where employee and consumer engagement was surveyed with a view to integrating them; finding that doing so "amplifies...