Off the Shelf: The Retail & CPG Blog

This Thanksgiving Day and day following often referred to as Black Friday witnessed blockbuster results for online retailers.  Thanksgiving sales ended up 39.3% over the holiday last year. Mobile traffic on Black Friday was 14.3 percent of all retail traffic compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. This season will definitely be an interesting time for marketers.  The National Retail Federation (NRF) projects that 36% of holiday shopping will be done online (leveraging the Web for researching, comparison shopping before making a purchase). 

Continue reading "This holiday season, what will make shoppers click?" »

Posted by Tanveer Singh Khanuja at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Are Brick and Mortar companies facing extinction?" »

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Considered by some to be the father of modern advertising, John Wanamaker is credited with saying "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half". 

Wanamaker's question is one of the biggest in marketing and one which persists to this day.  Living in the late 1800s - early 1900s, his was a world of mass market print media where it was very difficult to correlate marketing and advertising spend to actual sales in his retail stores. 

Fast forward to the late 1990s - early 2000s, and digital marketing and online sales channels are offering retailers and CPGs the opportunity to calculate ROI on marketing spend.  Tracking with tools like Google Analytics and Omniture allowed marketers to isolate specific activities along the process and divert funds / attention to those providing the most return.  A simple example is the ability to track impressions to clicks to conversions to online sales (and incremental profits). 

These are simplistic high ROI examples that don't take into account factors like brand awareness or sales driven to Bricks & Mortars, but you get the idea. 

So what about companies not selling online?  How can they track media effectiveness to a Brick & Mortar point of sale?

One way is to use an offer with a coupon or code that provides a 'line of sight' from the media channel to the point of sale.  If a customer redeems the offer then the revenue can be attributed to the campaign.  Though mobile couponing has seen successes in this, a challenge is that printing coupons and remembering codes can be an impediment to redemption and conversions. 

Another method is something we take to large CPGs.  This involves running analysis on historic campaign data from costs to target segments to response numbers.  Insights can be derived on the contribution of the different media types, and then the insights are used to model and simulate future campaigns.  Marketers can then select the optimal media mix which maximizes their response and activation rates, and in turn incremental sales and net profit!

If only John Wanamaker could see what has become of his classic question...

Posted by Kaysa Kumar at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently met up with an old friend who works for one of the largest global advertising and marketing groups.  His focus area is Consumer Goods companies, and over drinks he was telling me that his clients are increasingly viewing digital marketing development services as a commodity. 

While he was speaking from an agency perspective, his reference to commoditization got me thinking about what those CPG clients are driving towards.  In this case it brought to mind 3 things; cheaper, quicker, and consistent; and how digital marketing platforms that we've built and run for global CPGs enable these goals. 

Cheaper - When we hear commoditization we immediately think costs.  My friend's concern is the cost of his agency services and a race to the bottom in rate cards, but there are many other cost components for CPGs.  Some companies are already realising cost benefits by consolidating hosting & support activities and optimising processes, but this is only one gain to be had. 

From an Infosys perspective the next logical savings opportunity comes in leveraging offshore delivery.  Using the Global Delivery Model to shift work can immediately realise development and deployment savings of over 30%.

A further enabler of cost savings is in reusable assets.  Agency rate cards can be expensive, and duplicating development effort across numerous sites can quickly add up.  By reusing assets like webservices across sites, agencies can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs (and of course pass that savings on to the customer)!

Quicker - Reusability is a nice segue into time-to-launch.  In today's dynamic marketing environment the time to take a site live is key.  CPGs can't be limited to pre-planned marketing activities; they need agility to immediately react to everything from shifting consumer tastes to competitor movements.  

As in our cost example above, calling on a library of reusable webservices and assets can shave weeks-to-months off development schedules, bringing sites live in a fraction of the time taken previously. 

When combined with efficiencies from (previously mentioned) optimised processes, we've even seen sites taken from concept to live in less than 24 hours.

Consistent - In its early days Digital Marketing was a bit like the Wild West with brand and agencies within the same company left to their own devices; creating sites and campaigns with little alignment and few standards.  This obviously led to inconsistency in user experiences and messaging across the brand portfolio and geographies.  As digital strategies developed, consistency has gained importance with companies ensuring brand teams and agencies align to defined standards and practices.  Building processes and audits in to a Digital Marketing Platform allows CPGs to ensure compliance whether it's messaging, aesthetics, or user journey. 

Further, those same reusable webservices we talked about earlier mean that users are automatically getting a consistent experience when logging in, registering, or interacting with the site in any number of ways.

So if my friend is right and digital marketing development is being commoditized, a digital marketing platform may be the smart way for tomorrow's CPG to reap benefits in cost, time, and consistency...

Posted by Kaysa Kumar at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sports Marketing has always been one of the biggest verticals in any of the world's leading sporting goods industry. It's by far the biggest unit within Brand Marketing for any leading sporting goods industry.

• Have you ever wondered why sporting goods companies use professional athletes as their brand ambassadors?
• What a professional athlete (or asset) would mean to the brand that has contracted him / her?
• What does the brand mean to the contracted athlete (or asset)?

There is a complete value chain behind contracting the asset to realizing its value (ROI). In today's world this value chain is further augmented and supported by various Digital Marketing platforms and its realization complemented as a Digital Asset Value chain.

Let's start at the basics - why would someone want to contract a David Beckham and show case him as a brand ambassador?

The answer is simple - he is a huge icon, with a great fan following and people like to follow his trends and products he supports. Companies like to target this audience with major digital marketing campaigns and ad campaigns to enhance the volume of sales of their products. This could tie in with a major sporting tournament or a product launch.

So, how does one get contracted by a company? And how is his contracted period lived? This is the "life cycle of a contracted asset"; which is augmented by a digital value chain.

Posted by Gagandeep Singh Nanra at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Few weeks back, while browsing one of my favorite cricket websites, I came across a fantasy game hosted on their website. Somehow I got impulse to join the game and play with my fellow mates spread across social network and other unknown sources. 4 weeks down the line, I am realizing that I am visiting the website about 10 times more than what I used to do earlier fulfilling or even exceeding the expectations of website owners.

This triggered the thought to find out how brands are using Gaming as medium to generate more brand awareness, drive more traffic to their online presence, build more consumers loyalty and finally converting them into sales.  This is especially more relevant for Retail and CPG companies who other than demonstrating their product/services qualities and probably manufacturing process were struggling to offer anything fresh and jazzy to their consumers to build consumer loyalty over a longer period of time.

Why Gaming?

Let's get real and put on Brand CEO's hat and see how (if) Gaming will help my brand. Here is my take:

1)      If my game is interesting, easy to understand but still very competitive in nature, I would be able to bring more traffic to my site and sustain consumer traffic on my site for much longer period.

2)      If I combine this with one of my bigger product or campaign launches, I will give my product every opportunity to catch more eyeballs.

3)      If I connect the game on Social media sources, I will be able to generate fan loyalty and multiply my consumer base exponentially not just thro' sources like FB and/or Twitter but also via Word of mouth (or Blog in Digital Marketing world).

4)      Games are much easier to propagate device independently meaning I am able to target people with iPhone, iPad, smartphones with pretty much the same investment as done for building web based games.

Let's just look at some stats over the last few months and

Ø  A recent report by Jupiter Media Metrix states that 35.1 million people play online games and the number is projected to increase to 104.9 million in next 6 months.

Ø  Toyota's was ranked 6 among major car companies when they launched their online game Adrenaline racing game on MSN Gaming Zone in 2000. In 3 months, they rocketed to number 2.

Ø  A total of 60,000 children logged onto Lego's online treasure hunt campaign to search for its new Mini Figures range. I don't have the corresponding sales numbers but for sure the final sales would have got a big boost.

Online gaming is real and at the same time a casual way of introducing your brand to consumers in unique way.  Tell us what your customers and clients are doing in ever growing and improving Online Gaming space.

Posted by Akshay Gupta at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is marked shift amongst CPG companies to shift their marketing spends to digital from traditional media - close to 12% - 15% spend is planned for digital.

Why are CPG companies moving to digital media? What are the questions they are grappling with?

·        How do we react to the shift of control from marketer to consumer?

·        Consumers are now in control of the messaging they receive - therefore, how do we focus on the 'pull' instead of the 'push'?

·        Consumer data has always existed but brands are now realizing the true potential of data and the need to treat it as one of the most important assets. How do we create and mine the asset to realize the maximum ROI from our loyal customers? How do we reach those who matter?

·        How do we create digital campaigns that can be launched in hours, not months?

·        How do we increase digital activities and still keep costs in control? How do we foster digital creativity and yet, ensure that we reuse what we have already built?

Traditionally, CPG companies have decentralized digital marketing - let the brand managers do what they want, how they want, when they want.  Though this has driven creativity and speed, the lack of a central approach has led to a fractured model of digital marketing.

The front-runners in digital are now focusing on 'Digital Marketing Platforms'.

What would a digital marketing platform do - is it about hosting all websites at a single location? Does it force our digital agencies to work on a specified technology and therefore, inhibiting creativity? Neither of the above.

 What does a Digital Marketing platform provide - is it a solution for Digital next? It provides:

·        Platform that allows marketers and creative agencies to build on multiple technologies with tools and reusable components thereby, reducing time and effort - such a platform, if used effectively, can reduce campaign launch times within 24hours

·        Centralised consumer data that the analytics brain of the digital platform can then leverage to provide meaningful insights - imagine the power of being able to send targeted messages across channels based on your asset's (read, consumer) browsing pattern or registration profile

·        Adapters and solution components that seamlessly integrate with multiple channels including mobile and social channels such as Facebook - if we need to engage with our assets, we need to go beyond websites and microsites and engage more intimately and frequently

·        Processes and solutions that ensure that the digital campaigns have been built robustly and are scalable and secure - how often have we seen digital campaigns break as they go viral?

·        Solution components for the future - marketers focus on brands, platforms focus on the latest cutting edge technologies and processes to support the brands

Posted by Amby at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Facebook and Twitter's of the world have provided corporate world a new organic way of socializing with their consumers. A new innovative way to build brand awareness & brand loyalty. A new way to connect with consumers as per there profile, preferences, likes and dislikes at a time of the day convenient to them.

The experimentation started with more of broadcast campaigns/deals/promotions to now with two way communication. The idea is to start an interactive dialogue/conversation and keep the consumer engaged. Today the marketing teams of medium and large organizations are lined up to do marketing on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels. The teams are putting strategizes for the next financial year to drive branding and how to provide better consumer experience. Organizations are trying to give complete website experience on the social channel by investing on Facebook apps and custom pages. For organizations that do have their presence on social channel today, are trying to innovate to keep the interest of consumer intact and be relevant in the ever changing social channel. One of the important property of the social channel is its ability to go Viral.

Why the rush!! Over last one year, social channel has shown its influence to not just the corporate world but also to governments around the world. They say it all started with tweets and texting in Egypt. It played an important role for people to communicate, collaborate & most importantly EXPRESS. It's a mob on the net. However we have also seen a dangerous face of it, when anonymous groups used the social channel to coordinate DoS on non-supporters of Wikileaks.

Baking period:  Yes, organizations are still experimenting to join the dots and define a roadmap for marketing with social channel. They still have the challenge to converts the 'Likes' to actually drive up sales. Note that it's not just a learning curve for the organizations but for the consumers also.  Do people really know that a 'Like' click on any product/brand is equivalent to opting in to receive communication on that product/brand?

As the consumers mature on social channel overtime, I believe the challenges to engage with get tougher because people do not like push communication. Smart organizations have been trying to engage fans on social channel for a cause. However if you ask the people to 'Like' you before you donate for the latest earthquake in Japan? I would say, common on - give me a break!!! What kind of humanitarian values is that?

Also is it a good idea for organizations to sell directly on the social channel? OR just share relevant information on events/promotions to people who 'Like' you and use this channel to get effective feedback on your brands by polling them.

The other important question that organizations are trying to get answered is "How much should we customize the solution for a particular social marketing channel?" particularly when digital assets reusability has been a challenge for many organizations. On the other hand IT industry has moved swiftly to provide point solutions around these channels to reduce turnaround time; like the 'SHOPTAB' feature (used by Coca cola) to link their Facebook merchandise shopping cart with existing online store, usage of Social Relationship Management Platform - 'Vitrue' (used by Diageo brands like Smirnoff) to enable a CMS like feature for Facebook apps development using 'Vitrue Tabs' and 'Vitrue Organizer' OR usage of 'Wildfire' to build and launch Social Media Marketing campaigns.

Posted by Amby at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Susie Lonie of Vodafone UK had never thought that the little pilot project done in Nairobi will soon become a household name in Kenya. The founder of M-Pesa in Africa has paved way for mobile payments across African countries where the customers can transfer money, withdraw cash and buy airtime from their mobile phones. Popular in the 57% of Kenyan adult population, the number of domestic transactions done by M-Pesa has outstripped the money transfers Western Union does globally.

Well, this is just a small instance which unveils the power of mCommerce. Going by the numbers, there are 490 million mobile Internet users globally, with that number set to increase to 1 billion by 2011. According to the Facebook official statistics released in January 2011, there are more than 200 million active users [40 percent] currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices and people who use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active as non-mobile users!

Though mobile commerce is one amongst many commerce channels in multi channel commerce, it has the potential to rule the roost as mobile phones have become more important than a wallet, carried everywhere from the dining table to bag's pocket to the folds of sleeping pillow. A recent research published by ATG (Art Technology Group) shows 33% of consumers across the world are using their mobile devices to browse or research products and services at least periodically, 13 % are using them to make purchases. Usually, mobile is used during all four phases of multi channel commerce, namely Engage, Transact, Fulfill and Services.

As using a Smartphone has become second nature to consumers, it should come as no surprise that retailers are making use of all modern and contemporary P's of marketing to engage their customers at this new and valuable touch point. If one has to ponder upon, what are the most frequently mCommerce transactions -  making a purchase using a mobile device; use of a mobile wallet or a digital coupon; price comparison using bar code scanning.  But there is no end to innovation and retailers are doing their best to make hay while the sun of mCommerce shines. Targeted GPS based promotions, mobile virtual malls, digital signage integration with mobile location and Coupon/gift card redemption at Store PoS are some of the new techniques being used to tap the power of the technology.  According to NRF, a reported 74% of online retailers either have in place or are developing mobile commerce strategies, while 20% have already implemented their complete plans. These have essentially become the need of the hour especially when customers can actually buy a Corvette on eBay mobile for $75,000. This is an eye opener which demonstrates that people are whole heartedly embracing the new technology and keeping the businesses on their toes.

And to help businesses bridge the gap, IT and business solution providers have come to the fore. Apart from providing mobile services for websites and e-commerce sites, the other areas of focus are Barcode/RFID solutions; Telematics; GPS based solutions; real time analytics and actionable alerts to store exception scenarios and robotics.  iPhone apps such as Shopkick and Android have created huge buzz in the market by launching easily downloadable apps to help customers buy when they are on move. A leading pharmacy retailer in US allows the users to refill the prescriptions from account history, take the order prints and locate store just by a single touch on the app.

Another growth opportunity in mobile industry is that of mobile payments which is gradually gaining traction. Since most of the companies only limit themselves to the usage of credit/debit cards for mobile payment, Paypal and Isis see a huge opportunity in the fledgling industry. Isis, which is a joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon wireless, intends to create a mobile wallet that will eliminate the need to carry cash, credit and debit cards, reward cards, coupons, tickets and transit passes.  The time is not surely far off when the customers won't carry anything in their wallets, not even debit/credit cards, just a wave of mobile phone will do!

So, the ball has been set off rolling and market forces will drive it. Let's see how much momentum it gathers!

Posted by Nitasha Dhir at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google, it merely was a search engine. For years, Google focused ruthlessly on its core functionality which was the mathematics that drove the algorithm, which produced the most relevant search results. Their success started producing all the traffic they could handle. But the noticeable thing was that they didn't sell anything. Then in 2002, it happened. Keyword based text ads started appearing along the right column of search results and then they launched the game changer Google AdWords program. Suddenly lots of traffic was getting converted into lots of revenue. This was a landmark event and the whole marketing world realized the potential of 'Online Display Advertising'.

If we see today's display advertising - the banners ads, blog ads, rich media ads, content sponsorship, email newsletter sponsorships, pop ups etc. may sound like an ancient way to get noticed, but that is not all. Now online display advertising is becoming far more interesting due to 2 important trends -

One such trend is localization, in which companies do a better local ad targeting. Today more and more prospective clients are searching for local businesses online. They have realized that it makes more sense to target those in their geo-specific area, than to target on a broader spectrum of terms. Targeting local specific terms is only creating more targeted leads, for their business. Many companies, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Local.com, have announced that they're getting into the local targeting game by offering geography-based advertising along with the standard demographic or keyword targeting the customers would expect.

Local targeting is already prevalent in search engine marketing lead by Google and it is good to know that display ads are heading in the same direction. The chart shows the exponential growth of 'US local online advertising spending' as the total such spending has almost become 4 times of what it used to be 5 years ago.

The only problem for such a localized business is the size and scope of the Internet. Today internet is been dominated by large multinational sites and these smaller localized businesses are first of all have very less presence and even if they there at all they often get buried up somewhere in the search engines. Therefore such a localized marketing probably needs a different approach all together for becoming effective.

The other noticeable trend to get excited about is the movement towards ad pricing based on cost per action (CPA) rather than cost per click (CPC). Paying for ads based on cost per action means that one does not pay the publisher until he/she gets the action desired from the ad. For example, if an advertiser wants its banner ad to drive someone to an online store to buy the advertised product, then the company won't have to pay until someone actually clicks the ad and completes the purchase. CPA is a means of controlling advertising spend. So, if the advertisers want to be sure that they are not indiscriminately spending money on terms that aren't driving business, CPA offers an opportunity to control the ROI. Now companies (such as Hydra, Commission Junction, Performics etc.) are not just blindly going to follow the eye balls, but they will follow the conversion as well. Jellyfish.com was the Internet's first comparison shopping search engine to operate exclusively on a Cost per Action (CPA) ad model and the same is being replicated by others.

It is going to be a Win-Win situation for both the customers and the advertisers. The customers will now be equipped with more relevant information about the products, offers, options available etc. than they used to have when the advertising was generic and not localized. On the other hand the advertisers can have better visibility and better communication with their customers. Also the companies focusing upon CPA rather than CPC can bring down their marketing costs (which might have been going in vain earlier as they were not very sure about the conversion rate). This cost reduction may be forwarded to the customers with price reductions.

Posted by Arun Singh at 6:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Winning Consumers In-Store - 2" »

Posted by Larry Danna at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For as long as I can remember, influencing opinions and guiding decision-making at the point of purchase have been key objectives for CPG companies. However, recent developments in the global economic landscape and rapidly evolving technology are gradually increasing the need for CPG companies to engage consumers at the moment of truth, in-store.

Why CPG companies are focusing on in-store interactions?

Continue reading "Winning Consumers In-Store - 1" »

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Continue reading "Social Retail: The Age of Consumer Conversations" »

Posted by Larry Danna at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Cross-Channel Convergence" »

Posted by Larry Danna at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I remember the days when I would walk down seemingly endless aisles at the department store looking for the best deal on my favorite Colombian coffee only to find that the offer had ended just a day earlier. Two words come to mind when I think of those times; disappointment and frustration.

Fortunately for me, and all of you reading this blog, there are now better ways of getting what you want, whether it's detergents, diapers, or any other consumer packaged commodity. Here's what has changed the game:

Continue reading "The Rise of the Prosumer" »

Posted by Larry Danna at 6:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mobile apps are the latest fad in the techno savvy world today. Search for mobile apps in any search engine, and you will be surprised by the sheer number of search results. Development of mobile apps is almost like a cottage industry today and everyone wants to hitch on to the bandwagon that Steve Jobs pioneered.

But few industries had a tectonic shift with the advent of smart phones as Retail industry, as this industry is so much intertwined with the end user and now to the end user’s logical alter ego, the ubiquitous mobile phone.

Continue reading "Mobile applications to re-define the demography and modus operandi of Retail Industry" »

Posted by Punit Maheshwari at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Evolution of Analytics in Digital Marketing" »

Posted by Akshay Gupta at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this age of discerning and value chasing shoppers, Customer Loyalties can change in a single moment and gaining or retaining loyalty is a marketing warfare. Store is the final frontier where products are given equal opportunities to see, evaluate and choose the brand. Brands can be made or broken in these last few minutes of life span a shopper will give to your brand. It is then highly imperative for the brands to make best use of these last few minutes and ensure that the customers stay loyal. Here are 3 basic strategies, Retailers and CPG companies can look at to enhance customer loyalty.

Continue reading "Enhance Customer Loyalty at the Final moment of truth" »

Posted by Kirthi S Subramanian at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Multi-Channel Commerce - What does it mean?" »

Posted by Sudhir Holla at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Went shopping for a pair of jeans today. Got the usual question from the store clerk when checking out - What's your telephone number?

Is that question relevant any more? A recent analysis at a retailer led us to the statistic that for every customer that walks into the store and gets converted to a online customer; on an average the retailer would earn around $150 more over the next 1 year.

Continue reading "What's your facebook id?" »

Posted by Sudhir Holla at 1:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a 7 year old and a 4 year old; who like most of the children their age love their television time. Seems like you can almost predict the age of a child by the TV shows that they like. You can also figure out the age of the kids by the tunes their parents can hum!!

The TV show "graduation" path seems to go from Baby Einstein to Elmo to Barney to Dora/ Diego to Caillou......will map the rest of it as my kids grow.

Seems to me that Retailers can pick up a few tips from these shows on customer segmentation and lifestyle driven merchandising.

Continue reading "What Retailers can learn from Elmo, Barney and Dora" »

Posted by Sudhir Holla at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog post is inspired in part by Rahul's blog on "Can the grocery store provide an Amazon experience?". Set me thinking; seems like there are quite a few concepts that can be leveraged from the online world to provide consumers with a better shopping experience and in some cases make some money for the retailer as well.

This post is about the possibility of using a "Google Adwords" kind of concept to target consumers at a retail store at the "moment of truth"

Continue reading "Why can't "Google Adwords" be used in the brick & mortar world?" »

Posted by Sudhir Holla at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For the last few weeks, I have been very much occupied during my weekends in trying to build my Farm and my Mafia gang. Before you start wondering about my spare time activities, let me reassure you that I’m actually referring to two of the hottest games on Facebook from a company called Zynga. The games being referred to here are “FarmVille” & “Mafia Wars”.

This led to the question - Would games from Retailers or CPG companies be an effective tool for social marketing and gathering customer feedback on new products & initiatives?

Continue reading "Advertising through Games & Social Commerce" »

Posted by Anand Ramakrishnan at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From ideation to making the product available on the shelf, a typical CPG company spends majority of their promotion and advertising dollars on traditional channels- TV, radio and newspapers. Now pause for a moment and consider this:

• Close to 300 million Facebook users- a potential consumer base equivalent to the size of the US population!
• More than 100 million users log into Facebook at least once a day.
• 7 million unique visitors in Twitter in Feb 2009 – that’s a growth of 1382% over last year

With such exponential growth of digital traffic, are the rules of engagement beginning to change? Can CPG companies afford to ignore this new ‘emerging digital market’ and its potential purchasing and influencing power?

Continue reading "Digital Consumers – Are they driving CPG companies to think out of the box?" »

Posted by Anindya Trivedi at 1:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Mobile Marketing 2.0 – Branded vs. Syndicated Applications, what do you think will stick?" »

Posted by Joydeep K Haldar at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. Restaurants will see a dip in sales as consumers prefer eating in
2. Grocery coupon usage and redemption will increase as consumers look for deals to maximize the value of their grocery shopping trips
3. Retailers will cut back store expansion and focus on less expensive channels like online for marketing and sales
4. Brands will reduce their advertising spend significantly (most estimates predict an unprecedented 5-9% drop this year in ad-spending)
 

But the more intriguing and unexpected trend is how consumers are becoming more internet and  mobile-savvy and how retail and consumer product companies are reacting and keeping pace with the consumer.

Continue reading "As we grow poorer we become more mobile-savvy!" »

Posted by Sandeep Dadlani at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)