Occupy Amazon? LMAO...

Other retailers are just angry with Amazon because they didn't think of this idea sooner. Instead of wasting valuable holiday retail time being angry with Amazon, maybe the other retail bookstores should spend the resources to develop their own inbound marketing funnels. Physical storefront owners are just perturbed that customers enjoy the tactile experience of shopping even though many will ultimately make their purchase online. 

There would have to be a significant break in price or some other incentive (e.g., free shipping, bundled products/services) that would steer a customer away from that purchase. A $5 perk is insignificant if the item purchased retails for less than $25 since 3rd party shipping costs via Amazon would most certainly gobble up that benefit. This begs the question of how steep of a discount would be enough to lure a customer who is already at a physical retail store location to change their mind and shop elsewhere if the product were in stock.

Amazon.com is not the only online purveyor of goods with comparison shopping features for its customers. Many big box retailers have in-store product location websites which on-site employees can access via store terminals to find in-stock merchandise by nearby store location: Home Depot, Barnes and Nobles, Wal-Mart, JcPenney, etc. 

What is lacking here is awareness that customers do shop this way. Having a cozy atmosphere and sweet aromas piping in from a coffee kiosk is not going to pay the overhead costs, let alone the staff wages of a brick and mortar store. Brick and mortar bookstore owners can compete with a powerhouse like Amazon by closing the information gap that forces customers to seek outside sources for reviews, purchase validation, or price comparisons.

Frankly, I don't see my local Ace hardware store going out of business any time soon, even with several big box retailers (including a newly built Costco) located just a mile away on the same street. Maybe bookstores can learn something about local area marketing from this hardware store.

Best App Deployments of 2011

Google+ Hangouts enable free audio/visual conference calling with a group of up to 10 people. There's a 45-minute timer on the hangouts, so if you intend to be on it for longer than that, be sure there's a warm body who can let the app know that you're still around even when you're busy cooking up a holiday dinner. Check out the "Hangouts with extras" beta features. 

Amazon's Price Check lets shoppers at brick and mortar retailers use a smart device (iPhone, Android O/S) to enter the barcode of an item and purchase it from Amazon.com with a $5-off incentive. This takes comparison shopping to a whole new handheld level.

Move over iPen. Wacom has you beat with its Bamboo Paper app (for desktop or iPad) and its ergonomically-designed stylus for the iPad. Not only does it handle notetaking with handwriting recognition, it can also be used for sketching and presenting notes, ideas and sketches with others. Download these from Wacom's Bamboo Dock.

JPM Chase and Wells Fargo are among the front runners of the banking industry that are creating apps to make it easier for customers to transact with them using smartphone apps. Wells Fargo's Mobile Banking app allows users to check their available balances, view account activity, pay bills, make transfers between accounts or to other Wells Fargo customers, and locate the nearest Wells Fargo or Wachovia ATMs and office locations from an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Chase QuickDeposit allows customers to deposit checks with an iPhone, iPad or Android device with just two camera clicks. Whatever online banking features customers already use to manage their finances with desktop systems, the momentum within the banking industry for secure, mobile banking apps is bound to increase significantly.

Happy Star Rewards (available on iPhone and Android platforms), a location-based rewards app by parent company CKE Restaurants, invites users to check in when they dine at either Carl's Jr or Hardee's. The first check in earns the user a spin on the "Wheel of Awesome" for a chance to win free or discounted food, gift cards, and merchandise from participating partners. Winners can immediately redeem the prize or within seven days. While the location-based app released early last year, it still totally one-ups Foursquare, Facebook Places, and other check in apps. File this one under retention marketing.

Runner-ups:

Unable to sell off its mobile operating system webOS and no longer a manufacturer of the tabletware that houses this code, HP's webOS and its support resources are now part of the open source community where devs can use and modify freely.

Popplet, a web-based collaborative mindmapping tool. Think of popples as little buckets containing text, photos, and whatever else people share online. Free version only allows you to edit one popplet and the paid version allows you to create unlimited popplet. Downsides: Flash-based for desktop computers, still in beta, clunky interface.

CarrierIQ's hidden app collects device performance data from millions of Android, Blackberry, and Nokia mobile phones. Is that really a bad thing? What R&D entity wouldn't want to know more about their users and how their devices are being used? It is a gray area in US wire tapping laws since CarrierIQ's app engages in passive wiretapping for monitoring/recording data traffic. Unless these class action lawsuits can prove that CarrierIQ deliberately altered the traffic with the app, there's really not much that any user can do about it besides buy a mobile phone that doesn't have CarrierIQ's rootkit installed such as a Windows 7 Phone. So it tracks location data, big deal. How else would a mobile device be able to triangulate the best celltower reception or allow a user to check into their favorite retail shop?

Psychology of Sharing, a NYT study

The Consumer Insight Group of the New York Times did a study on the Psychology of Sharing. Its content has disseminated in some form to various marketers involved with social media. If you were curious, these people are responsible for the "study" which has been quoted with the same subject title. A summary presentation appeared on SlideShare.

Methodology:

• In-person interviews in major metropolitan areas (New York, Chicago, and San Francisco)
• Quantitative survey of 2,500 medium/heavy online sharers

Observations:

• Sharing is not new, but in the information age we share more content with more users from more sources with more people, more often and more quickly
• Sharing acts as information management
• 85% say reading other people's responses helps them understand and process information and events
• 73% say they process information more deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully when they share it

Motivations for Sharing:

• To bring valuable and entertaining content to others
• To define ourselves to others
• To grow and nourish our relationships
• Self-fulfillment ("We enjoy getting credit for it")
• To get the word out about causes or brands

6 Personas of Sharing:

• Altruists - share content to be helpful to others, and aspire to be reliable sources of information; prefers email and Facebook
• Careerists - well-educated sharers want to earn a reputation for bringing value to their networks, preferring content that is more serious and professional in tone; prefers  LinkedIn and email
• Hipsters - younger sharers “have only known life in the information age” and share cutting-edge and creative content, and they focus on identity-building; prefers Twitter and Facebook
• Boomerangs - sharers after validation and will respond to positive or negative responses; no strong preference but will share using Facebook, email, Twitter, and blogs
• Connectors - sees content sharing as a way to stay connected with others and make plans; prefers email and Facebook
• Selectives - put more thought into what they share and with whom they share it. Because their sharing is more personalized, they expect people to respond to and act on their content; Prefers email

I actually laughed at this part of the study:  Email is the #1 factor that influences sharing since it's perceived as more personal and private.

$199 is the new $249

Just a couple years ago, $249 was the magical number that a consumer could purchase any product for themselves without having to justify the expense to their significant other, spouse, or household budget. Whenever I see manufacturers conforming new products to a specific price point, I have to wonder if they are looking at just the short term benefits for the price cut or at the long tail benefits of having the product out in the market.

Magazine Technology

While pulp-based paper is not that expensive and a lot of Pacific Northwest lumber is shipped overseas to developing economies, print has gotten rather pricey and not just for advertisers. And, with new(er) media in play, this opens up a largely untapped digital space for consumers to get information about your products and services. NPR had mentioned today that direct mail catalog publishers are making their content friendlier to tablets and other mobile devices. HTML5 is on the right track but it is hardly the end destination to how digital content consumers will be viewing the Internet in the near future.

Beyond all the pretty pictures and color-rich graphics, what remains the constant is the requirement of increased bandwidth and storage. For consumers to readily adopt such a technology and use it in their daily lives, content has to stream as fast as a plain text email. 

There are a few approaches to how customers can view catalogs:

• as a physical mailer (pros: can customize pre-filled order forms with a customer's past purchases or giftees; cons: ultra-old school circa 1774, seen as junk mail, customers who shop online don't actually want a printed catalog since the catalog is the merchant's website, lead time requires a lot of planning and all your publishing components being on-time)

• with a web-friendly viewer (html or Flash, pros: a content standard; cons: limited to bandwidth contracts, Flash content can't be shared in the same way of just clipping out the content that a user wants to share rather than sending the entire presentation, requires specialized knowledge and software to look good)

• as a PDF (delivered as a web download or email attachment; pros: easy to use, many complementary "PDF" services to Adobe's standard from 3rd party vendors; cons: device manufacturers are slow to bring PDF-compatibility on-board due to licensing, software, and privacy concerns, limited or nil tracking capabilities for links embedded within PDFs)

• served up as email or web content (old school method circa 1995, pros/cons: easy to use, anyone can do it, an industry standard, not all email service providers allow rich-content to be served within an email, bandwidth/hosting limitations)

• within a rich-media, portable device-friendly reader (iPad, e-reader, smartphone, tablet, etc.; pros: new digital space, no standards for how or how much ad content should display; cons: closed ad networks with exorbitant pricing, few established software content builders, dual-payment system for advertisers and consumers--advertisers pay for ad content to be hosted/delivered to portable devices, consumers pay for the device, bandwidth, and hosting fees to get content, consumer mobile devices are not ad-free)

What is surprising is that all these methods still survive in conjunction with each other. Although, advertisers and publishers of different media standards will tell you that global revenue share has shifted from print to digital to 24/7 streaming.

Here are a few examples of sites using online magazine technology:

Edible Portland
Visit Vancouver USA - 2011 Regional Visitor's Guide
eDrive Magazine (an industry publication for electric motor and drive technology)