Vijay Dandapani

News that mobile commerce is seeing explosive growth is quiet nearly a quotidian headline and has been documented widely including on this blog. Yet a recent survey by Kony, a company that specializes in customer engagement applications on mobile operating systems, showed that while "87 percent of retailers believe mobile commerce will impact shopping in the next two years just 16 percent have a mobile strategy in place".  But knowing and even acknowledging (89% in the survey) the rise of m-commerce has not translated into action by way of developing a strategy much less the implementation of a plan to exploit the rising trend.

Continual changes in customer demographics for nearly all kinds of businesses in areas from race to income to mobility & educational attainment makes customer rentention seem like an unachieveable and unworthwhile goal. For businesses such as hotels in a major international gateway cities that have a high proportion of one-time customers turning them into repeats often looks like an exercise in futility.  A broad spectrum marketing cum advertising approach that necessarily treats all customers equally is almost certain to result in wasteful spending and revenue degradation as repeats who will take advantage of rebates and discounts and return to the service or product on offer. While there are several models using sophisticated means such as machine learning and predictive analysis to identify who are the One-time/First-time customers worthy of scarce ad/marketing dollars the smart bet remains on organic retention of customers. 

Synovate, a  Global market research company that provides market, consumer, and industry research to companies around the world has put out its Censydiam Consumer Trends 2011/12 model which not unexpectedly underscores the fact that consumers are into real time decision making with regard to purchases and with concomitant brand formation and association.

The seemingly obvious insight about reaction time should compel brands of all shapes and sizes to respond in real time through "live" channels to the consumer.  As Virgin America discovered to its chagrin about a year ago when one of its aircraft was diverted to an unintended and little used airport resulting in passengers being stuck on the tarmac for over four hours while their moods ranged from despair to rage with the entire sorry episode recorded in real time by a not so sympathetic (to Virgin) passenger. The unwelcome publicity prompted Virgin to offer a meager $100...

It matters not that the gee-whiz machine Watson with its transformative performance on the game show Jeopardy is named not after the original problem solver and sounding board, the fictional Dr. John Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame, but Thomas Watson, the man who built IBM. What does matter is that Watson's performance on the show blew away the sharpest humankind has on tap. Watson appears to merit a label beyond what has heretofore been described as disruptive techonology which include developments such as the Kindle, Open Source, Broadband and the Internet itself.  The automaton's game-changing performance, expectedly, has led to promises to tap its potential for industry with IBM announcing a research agreement "to explore, develop and commercialize Watson's advanced analytics capabilities in the health care industry".