... car-sharing services like Zipcar, carpooling by Gen Y-ers, bike sharing and “multi-mix forms of mobility”.

For instance, in a case study of consumers’ “post-green” mentality, the Ford report cites Portland, Oregon-based Depave - an organization that helped transform 94,000 square feet of concrete and asphalt into green spaces around the city.

In another exemplar of consumer influence, the report also cites an Indiana suburb that was redesigned to downplay auto traffic, including a new one-mile, walkable town center. Scattered among details of such trends are promotions for Ford’s energy-efficient models, in-car technology and sustainable manufacturing materials. 

According to Sheryl Connelly, Ford’s global futurist and author of the report, the automaker's goal is to be "proactive about the new ways people approach mobility, so it is unlikely to be blind-sided by changes in the world".

Adds Ms Connelly: "In the past, the company would base its strategy around building on our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses. Now we are looking at overall trends to see what we can control and what in the landscape we can shape."

Read the original unabridged AdWeek article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... "in the following five to eight years, China's e-commerce market will be super huge."

A market over which the world largest retailer is loudly smacking its lips.

According to Mr Price, WalMart's cooperation with Shanghai retail giant Store No 1 has slashed three years from the US titan's development plan for an e-commerce platform in China. "In the following five to eight years, China's e-commerce market will be super huge," Price said.

And, as if to underscore WalMart's enthusiam, China Business News this week reported that during 2012 the number of China's mobile internet users reached 388 million.

Mobile e-commerce is seen as an important area for future innovation, according to Tang Lei, eBay's director for strategic development in Greater China. "If e-commerce companies are not paying attention to mobile e-commerce, they will fall behind the times," he said.

The proportion of online retail sales to total retail sales is one of the most important indexes for measuring the growth of e-commerce. The ratio hit 4.32 percent in 2011, reports the Ministry of Commerce.

Read the original unabridged ChinaDaily.com article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a collection of datasets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using current database management tools.

The benefits - which can only be realised by massive investments in new technology - include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis and visualization.

According to Peter Tufano, the dean of Oxford’s Said Business School, which played host to the event, while awareness of the topic was high among enterprises, only about 6% of companies have got beyond a pilot stage, and 18% are still in one.

“That means three-quarters of industries are looking at this and saying ‘what is this all about?’”

Why aren’t they looking at Big Data? “The answer across all business,” he said, “was ‘we don’t know what the business case is.’”

But according to speakers at the event, the business case has already been answered.

Michael Chui has extensively researched the area for McKinsey Global Institute. His conclusion is emphatic: “The use of data and analytics in general is going to be a basis of competition going forward for individual firms, for sectors and even for countries. Those companies that are able to use data effectively are more likely to win in the marketplace.” [MT's italics]

MGI’s research showed that in just one field—personal location data—some $100 billion of value can be created globally for service providers through use of data.

Read the original unabridged WSJ article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... $7.1 billion, despite which market share will slip to 57.1%. 

Among the report's key forecasts are:

• Since eMarketer's May 2012 forecast, estimates for paid search have risen slightly to a compound annual growth rate [CAGR] of 9.7% on paid-search spending between 2011 and 2016, rather than 8.5% as estimated in May.

• The revision is prompted by greater-than-anticipated search spending in the first half of the year, as reported by the UK Interactive Advertising Bureau. 

• eMarketer estimates that in 2012 around $2.0 billion - or 23% of all UK digital adspend - will go to display advertising such as banners, rich media, video and sponsorships. The steady gains will partially come from an increase in use of realtime bidding and video formats, although doubts about the speed of economic recovery will lead some advertisers to focus on proven search tactics.
   
• Online video ads in Britain should rise from $273 million in 2012 to about $1.4 billion in 2016. The estimates include social video and video advertising on mobile devices.

According to eMarketer, in 2012 only the USA and Japan will outrank the UK’s $721 million market share, with projected mobile ad spending of $2.4 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively.

The annual rate of growth, estimated at 120% for 2012, is expected to remain above 50% until 2016, when mobile ad spending in the UK will approach $3.5 billion.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... how will new technology play a role in our lives eight years from now in 2020? 

Reports GeekWire journalist Taylor Soper: "The speakers had tons of insight, the discussion moved along well and there was plenty of time for audience questions".

The discussion was moderated by Scott Jacobson, a partner at Madrona Venture Group which funds innovative technology companies. The panel discussed everything from shopping with a mobile device to the pros and cons of physical and digital storefronts to analyzing how men shop differently than women.

They also talked about the planet's biggest and most famous e-commerce business, debating the impact of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the potential of physical Amazon stores.

Here’s what each of the panelists had to say about the future of e-commerce:

• Scott Jacobson, Partner, Madrona
  “Companies need to create a durable and competitive advantage. If they are selling the same products I can get on Amazon or Ebay, that is a very challenging place to start. But sometimes durable, competitive advantages come from a unique product where you’re the only one who can make it or sell it. Sometimes it comes from a differentiated business model. There are plenty of opportunities, but it’s got to be something that is both differentiated and durable. By default, if it’s not differentiated or not durable, then somebody else is going to do the same thing. Look at Zulily. They took a differentiated approach to curating product and featuring that product and took the line of, ‘We’re going to feature local brands nobody has ever heard of,’ as a marketing kind of thing. They are extremely good at both curating all that selection and then very cost-effectively acquiring email addresses that turn into people visiting the website that turns into customers. That’s differentiated — curating and scouring this stuff — and they’ve been able to demonstrate the durability.”
   
• Amal Jain, Distinguished Scientist, eBay
  “I would pay attention to the service part. Here’s an example: You empty a cereal box and throw it away in the trash. People who hate shopping want the new cereal box to show up in your kitchen or at the door at the very least. This is the kind of service to pay attention to. A few weeks ago, I was thinking of buying something and I thought I’d just buy it later. Then I forgot. It bugged me. So people, they want to buy those things right away.
  Another thing I would pay attention to is price discrimination/differentiation, especially with coupons.”
   
• Nadia Shouraboura, founder/ceo, Hointer
  “What you will see is the vast majority of products going online. The other products need innovation. If traditional brick-and-mortar stores innovate fast, they’ll hold on to the customer. It’s about innovation and change. We need change in traditional brick-and-mortar.”
   
• Gautam Gupta, co-founder/ceo, NatureBOX
  “There are two things to think about. One is to really invest and think about your product, the quality of your product and how to differentiate the product or experience that you bring to the market. The second thing to think about is customer acquisition. How do you get traffic in the door of your site and convert those visitors to customers? I think a lot of people start e-commerce websites betting on organic traffic and P.R. and things like that. My advice to an entrepreneur would be to take a step back and really think about how they’re going to do that. These businesses are centered around transactions, so either the math works or it doesn’t.”
   
• Alex Tibbetts. General Manager, Nordstrom
  “It’s something about building a business around the customer, not around the product. The possibility of doing so is different and better than it ever was before, and the benefit of doing so is potentially greater.”
   
• Shirish Nadkarni, Co-founder, Zoomingo
  “I think there’s going to be an interesting battle between the traditional retailers and the pure play etailers. The etailers will try to mitigate their disadvantage versus physical retail by doing a better job of curation, discovery and personalization. Right now it is very much a search-driven behavior. They will also try to do a better job of allowing the customer get a better sense of fit and finish. Physical retail will try to leverage digital — especially mobile — technologies to improve the customer experience so they continue to prefer going to physical stores over buying online. This means equipping both customers and sales associates with the right information to making the purchase decision, as well as improving the checkout process. They will also leverage their physical store assets to allow customers to either pick up items from local stores or even the reverse where they can order something from the store and have it delivered to their home.”

Commenting after the event, Bellevue Mayor Conrad Lee said: “When these smart people learn and share opportunities and ideas from other people, they do great things, we benefit from them creating new businesses and that’s what we depend on for our economy."

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

...“they’re signing their own death certificate, because their credibility is going to erode more and more.  

"And ultimately, that could end up hurting them", Mr Carroll added. He cites as an example of the genre this recent BuzzFeed political ad.

During the presidential election season, President Obama’s campaign paid BuzzFeed to post content that looked just like one of the website’s “native” news stories.

Although savvy ssurfers might notice the small box in the righthand corner that says 'Paid Political Content', other readers could easily assume it was a genuine news story.

The Atlantic magazine has recently taken this trend one step further with a series of videos called: Are We There Yet?

But all the videos are paid promotional spots for Mercedes Benz, listed as: 'Sponsored Content Provided by Mercedes Benz', using text in a small, light gray font that could easily go unnoticed.

But "what goes around comes around", as the old proverb has it. For example the 'advertorial' fad of the '70s.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... tracking those consumers wherever they may wander across the web.

Programmatic buying is the reason that luggage ad follows you irrespective of whether you’re on Weather.com or on a local news blog.

Ms Vega reports that this mega shift is "punishing traditional online publishers, like newspaper, broadcast and magazine sites, who are receiving a much lower percentage of ad dollars as marketers use programmatic buying across a much broader canvas".

"Some sites, like CNN.com, refuse to even accept advertising through programmatic buying because they do not want to cede control over what ads will appear.

She cites Ben Winkler, chief digital officer at Omnicom media shop OMD: “It’s allowing advertisers to assign value to media rather than publishers,” he said.

"Publishers can’t control the price, but they can control the quality of the content and the audience on that site.”

FMCG advertisers like Nike, Comcast, Progressive and Procter & Gamble are currently using programmatic buying, while luxury advertisers are starting to follow suit.

Forrester Research estimates that in 2012 all ads traded on exchanges (which includes all programmatic ads) have increased by more than 17.5% to about 629 billion impressions (the number of times an ad appears) versus just 535 billion impressions in 2011.

Read the original unabridged New York Times article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... “multicultural” marketing tends to be an afterthought.

In an interview with Adweek, Warner argues that until now marketers have taken a simple approach to the multi-cultural segment - like translation or featuring an African-American in a commercial. "But the diversity conversation is evolving, and it has to evolve so that marketers aren’t thinking about it from an obvious point of view."

Continues Warner: "Marketing has to evolve into a cultural competency. Brands have to ask themselves:

• How do these consumers understand their cultural experience?
   
• How do they live?
   
• What do they value?

"The big thing is not looking at multicultural marketing as an add-on to the general strategy. It should be thought of within your general marketing."

She cites as an exemplar: "When Disney was thinking about how to drive meaningful engagement with multicultural audiences, they developed the Disney Dream Academy.

"It selects 100 multicultural students from across the US - students who’d probably fall through the cracks otherwise - and provided them with a three-day leadership program to help them align their goals and objectives with real-life experiences. For example, a student who wanted to be a designer got to work with Disney’s costume designers.

"That program was a perfect example of a brand that brings its purpose to life in a way that connects meaningfully with a multicultural audience."

[MT comment]: Although the markets addressed by Ms Warner have mainly been US-domestic, MarketingTomorrow.com points to comparable demographic trends elsewhere - which suggest that the US ethnic growth curve could well be replicated across Europe and Australasia.

Read the original unabridged Adweek article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the 'flavour of the month' syndrome and other modish fads. 

Argues Mr Reitzes: "The PC industry is blind to how the newer crop of mobile devices, especially tablet computers, that are eclipsing the role of the PC, and pushing out the replacement cycle for the category."

Reitzes believes that a new generation of consumers and IT workers are figuring out how to compute differently to those that started using PCs in the 1990s – relying more on mobile devices and the cloud – as PCs see significant “task infringement” by the day.

"As a result", he posits, "it can no longer be assumed that the PC market can remain in the range of 350 million units a year – and we argue that the PC replacement cycle is in the process of being elongated by 1-2 years, resulting in the loss of 50-100 million units in annualized demand by 2015.

"After years of denial, most PC industry players still don’t seem to realize what is happening – and don’t have contingency plans. PC’s are not the only subsector impacted in tech—as printing also is caught in the wake of mobility. Given these factors we are significantly cutting estimates for the PC industry to reflect further deterioration in PC related revenues."

But have Mr Reitzes and his ilk ever tried to create a readable thirty column/120-row spreadhseet on a tablet?

Or layout an ad?

Or run several programs conjointly?

In the real world of business - and marketing in particular - such tasks are par for the course.

Read the original unabridged Barrons article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... just 0.4% growth. Italy will contract by 0.5% and Spain will retrench by 1.4%

In all cases the predictions are that output will be weaker than expected by the respective national governments, leading to the zone's budget deficit reduction targets being missed.  

Says  economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn: "Europe is going through a difficult process of macro-economic rebalancing, which will still last for some time.

"Europe must continue to combine sound fiscal policies with structural reforms to create the conditions for sustainable growth to bring unemployment down from the current unacceptably high levels."

EC officials blame the deepening sovereign debt crisis and financial market concerns about a possible breakup of the Eurozone for its "disappointing" growth performance in 2012.

The Commission expects that domestic demand will make no contribution to Eurozone GDP in 2013, as the lack of jobs and tax increases hit consumer spending.

However, it expressed confidence that by 2014 the benefits of the austerity programmes would bear fruit, leading to expansion of 1.4%.

Read the original unabridged Guardian article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.