The Customer Empowerment Fallacy: How Technology is Eroding the Customer Power

Do you remember who was the TIME magazine the 2006 Person of the Year? In case you don’t, it was you, me and all the people of the world who had access to the Net: armed with the Internet and the social media the customer seemed to have been able to change the market power game and be for the first in modern history on the market steering wheel (See link). Marketers baffled by the decreasing effectiveness of the traditional marketing communication and the time-honored persuasion tactics had no other choice but accept the fact that their full and undisputed control on the media and message was a thing of the past.

Praised as one of the major upshots of technology democratization, social networking, citizen journalism, and customer engagement, the customer empowerment became a major nightmare of the marketers forced to open their business to customer scrutiny and expose them to social media publicity disasters. The Customer Empowerment as a game changer was something I consistently would mention to my students at the very start of my Digital Marketing courses the last years: the smart, tech-savvy and networked customer was not anymore the weak link in the Marketing Equation.

Is the Customer Empowerment still the case? I am not sure at all and certainly, I have to think twice before I say this to my students again. The very technology that empowered the consumer during the last decade seems to work some time now again to the marketer's advantage. In fact, I have some bad news for the empowered consumer: Marketers armed with AI, immense computer power and zillions of bytes of customer data are quickly gaining the market upper hand. Customer profiling based on data trails consumers create online gives marketers new tools to create detailed customer profiles and predict as well as influence their behavior in ways we need to look at and discuss in more detail.

In the Market Power / Technology grid I attempt to describe how I look to this issue. The years in the timeline represent some in my view milestones of the marketing power journey.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16242528/ns/us_news-life/t/time-magazines-person-year-you/#.W_rn5WhKiM8

How to deal with the empowered customers when they misuse their power

I usually start my talks on Social Media marketing with showing to the audience a list of questions marketing practitioners have on the impact of technology on their business, markets and marketing practice.
One question of my list is "How to deal with the empowered consumer". I am especially interested for this question because customer empowerment is one of the most important (side-) effects of the internet and social media boom, a phenomenon that will shape the marketing thought and practice in the coming years: as academics and practitioners already realize the market power migration will change not only the rules of the marketing (from pushing to collaborating, from broadcasting to engaging, from talking to listening to name some important ones) but also the focus of it. One of the new focus areas will be reputation management and preventing customer  attacks. If you want to know more about this I suggest the book of Gillin and Gianforte "Attack of the Customers".
During my talk last week in the E-Travel Summit I had again the opportunity to talk about such issues. After the speech I was approached by the management group of a hotel who wanted to have my opinion on how to deal with customers who make a (discounted) non-refundable booking in the hotel and do not show up or cancel the booking and ask their money back because there was a "serious" reason that they cancelled their booking.
While some of these customers are persuaded by talking that what they ask is not possible some insist to have their money back otherwise they will wreck  the reputation of the hotel in the social media.
Of course no business that has invest to good service and reputation is happy about such a possibility; the people I spoke were really concerned about the  issue and eager to have some advice.
What is the right strategy in such cases? Should the business give up to threats to protect its reputation or keep a firm position and face the possibility of a reputation damage?

I told them that there are different levels where one should deal with such practices in this particular case.
The first level is during the booking process: In this stage it is important to be absolutely open and transparent with the customer.
How can you do that? Be sure for example that the customers before pressing the button for closing the deal see a last screen or pop-up reminding  them that they buy a non-refundable ticket and mentioning their options: To accept that there is no possibility to have the booking refunded for any reason, to buy a travel insurance covering refund in case of unexpected events or buy a refundable booking. If the customer clicks that he is aware of these facts and still prefers the non-refundable option, be sure to inform them with a confirmation email about their option again and possibly offer the possibility to change the booking within 24 hours to a refundable one.
Such an open yet water-proof attitude and deprives customers from much ammunition when they change their mind.
But what should you do with customers who despite such clear and binding agreements still threaten with reputation damage? The next step is to engage in a direct discussion with the customer outside the social media space: by phone, email or personally if necessary. Most customers will give up in this stage if you show that you are interested and take the customers seriously but also remind them their own commitments.
For the few that despite all this will insist and threaten I have another piece of advice: Ignore them if they are irrelevant or invisible in the social media: you do not need to worry about someone without any presence at all in the social media or someone with 20 Facebook followers. If the person has a serious social media presence then you have two options: either try to make him/her forget the issue by offering something as compensations (like a discount in the following booking) or follow closely their posts on the social media and respond professionally, being prepared at the same time to spend some time on the case. I do not think that giving up to threats is an option, maybe another option is to scrap the discounted non-refundable options altogether.
Is there, despite all these measures, any guarantee of avoiding such problems completely? I am afraid  the answer is no. Consumers are now aware of their power and some of them will be eager to misuse it. We must not be surprised by this, this is in human nature and businesses have done this often in the past (and still do it in some cases). The issue is that reputation management will be a topic in the next years, not only for large multinationals but also for any business big or small.

Marketing in crisis: what's the way out?

In his 2004 book Marketing As Strategy Nirmalya Kumar expressed his views on how the marketing profession can escape from the destructive route it is riding the last years and transform to a business activity that will regain the respect of the public and CEOs. If we believe the latest findings of the study conducted by the of the Fournaise Marketing group in 2011 not much has changed since: Marketers are still not seen by the majority of CEOs as a a real asset: "73% of CEOs think Marketers lack business credibility: They can't prove they generate business growth".
This is a worrying fact and a red flag that field marketers and academics should take seriously. We academics must realize that there seems to be a gap between what we teach our students in college, what they will be asked to do when they enter the field and what their CEOs expect from them. Field marketers on the other hand must understand the big change in the marketplace called customer empowerment. One of the symptoms of this change is the fact that the public is mistrusting marketers, mainly those insisting on monologues, one way communication and those who still think that they know better than their customers what they need and want.
One of the interesting issues highlighted in the report is the perception of  the majority of CEOs that "They (Marketers) are focused too much on the latest trends such as social media, because they believe they represent the new marketing frontiers - but can rarely demonstrate how these trends will help generate more business for the company".
Interesting remark but it should not surprise us, there are very few marketing activities that can really and clearly demonstrate how they help generate more business for the company, so in fact we do not talk about a new problem here.
To my opinion the whole issue is simple, many marketers never learned to be critical of themselves and were also never critical of trends and hypes. In a number of earlier posts in this blog I highlighted the Social Media "experts" explosion threatening to derail the social media marketing. The social media is indeed an important marketing landmark as well as an important social phenomenon; it is also a major challenge to marketers who have to learn new ways of dealing with the new customer. This simply means listening to the customer's (social) voice, engage customers and stop broadcasting; the customer is now the powerful party and the sooner marketers realize this the better.
Douglas McGregor wrote in 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise where on the basis of the X - Y theory he urged organizations to pursue their objectives by engaging their personnel rather than managing it. That means to look for ways to develop and use the potential of their employees rather than trying to manage them by means of control and punishment. Marketers should in analogy look for ways to help their customers to meet their objectives and needs by listening to them, getting them involved in their business processes and becoming their advocates. This will be The Human Side of Marketing that the empowered customers expect to experience today.

So if we talk about a way out of the crisis in Marketing theory and practice the best course to follow is to get back to the basics: Listen to the customer voice and try to understand who the new customer is. This will help us marketers to transform our picture based on the mass marketing era and device ways to communicate with the customer on personal, individual level. A basic requirement here is to understand that we are not the powerful party any more and that our brand is not our property any more either. Successful business of the future will be those finding ways to engage the customer successfully, address the individual customer needs and use the customer intelligence as a source of innovation.

En route to Social Media 2.0?

On 2007 I wrote an article co-authored by my Master student Stefan Fountain* (published in 2008 in the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice) arguing that businesses could use efficiently the Social Media (the term Web 2.0 was more popular at that time) as Marketing tools. As you might remember at that time businesses were looking puzzled and helpless to the alarming signs of growing customer empowerment through the Social Media Revolution. For me and those following the developments closely at that time, was clear that the Social Media will be the next big thing in the Internet evolution and the next frontier for business strategists.
Today, just four years later, the Web 2.0 / Social Media movement (described as Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff) has been firmly embedded in the minds and hearts of online users and business strategists alike. The Social Media have also become substantial channels of political expression and tools of citizen empowerment beyond the control of states or regimes.   The online users using social media as part of their daily routines has reached the hundreds of millions. With more than 50% of consumers using “smartphones, social networks and other emerging tools” McKinsey talks in a recent report about the customer becoming a media junkie. On the other hand the staggering adoption rates of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and LinkedIn by businesses has created a gold rush atmosphere reminding the dot.com age. In a recent report published here in Holland presenting the results of a survey about the adoption of the social media by businesses (Social Media Monitor, 2011) we read that by now 90% of the top 100 brands in Holland have now adopted the Social Media as part of their strategy, up from 67% last year;  48% of them has already a Social Media Manager in place. This has happened for more businesses very swiftly: only 5 from the brands that participated in the survey were active in social media longer than three years while the majority (56%) was active between six months and two years in social media.
While the picture looks encouraging we could ask ourselves whether the social media as marketing strategy is reaching its maturity stage and more importantly what will be the next step. I am afraid that soon we will detect the first signals of saturation: Any marketing tool when adopted by everyone is losing its effectiveness and uniqueness. The same I would expect to happen with the Social Media soon, mainly as a result of the unbalanced focus of businesses in 4-5 social media platforms and the very limited use of the social media as tools for promoting innovation, co-creation and mass customization. In the above mentioned Social Media Monitor we can clearly see that social networks are hardly used for R&D purposes. Furthermore there is little attention on the identification of Brand Promoters or Super Promoters as customer influencers while the social media domain is underutilized by most SMEs as (free) source of market intelligence.

Al in all a mixed picture on the status of social media as strategic marketing tools. On one hand the threat of saturation due to one-sided focus, on the other hand opportunities hardly utilized. Time for the Social Media 2.0 era?
* Constantinides E., Fountain S., 2008, Web 2.0: Conceptual foundations and Marketing Issues, Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, vol 9, nr 3, pp. 231 – 244

Forgot your laptop in the train? No problem, Twitter is here

From personal experience (but without the means to actually verify the story): On 15 February I saw in my Twitter feed a request to retweet a post about a laptop found in the train between Groningen and Leeuwarden (see below)

I retweeted the post without paying much attention but somehow I the case cme back to my mind a few days later. Curious for the outcome of the action I asked the person who posted the request whether the owner was found. The answer was (guess what) Yes!! Amazed I sent a second question asking how long it took this to happen and the answer was even more amazing: the owner of the laptop was found in 30 minutes! (for those who do not believe this the posts are available )

Incredible and scary at the same time. I can think of hundreds of examples that such effects can be useful as well as many others that the effects can be undesirable or even dangerous. One thing is sure, our world is now dominated by social media, almost nothing is any more impossible and there are no more secrets. If this is a good or bad thing, depends I guess from the perspective you look to it. For example for the former and current Middle East dictators the Social Media is the worst nightmare they ever had. For the other side of the coin I suggest reading The Cult of the Amateur of Andrew Keen.

Customer Empowerment: Are you in control of your brand? (or is your brand a public property)

The US retailer GAP experienced a public outcry that reminded me the good old New Coke case. The redesign of the GAP logo caused a storm of protest of customers / fans in Twitter and Facebook forcing the management to recall its decision and reintroduce the old logo again. The full story. Specially interesting for those who still doubt that the customer is now in control.
With my thanks to Allen Westra for sending me the link.

Social Media: getting mainstram

When this blog started, more than 2 years ago, the terms Web 2.0 and Social Media were just beginning to attract executives's attention. Since then the Social Media have become a major issue for businesses and especially marketers. A real Social Media Tsunami spills out to all directions affecting the lives of individuals and changing the way business operate: in this blog the issues of customer empowerment, openness, transparency and public scrutiny of companies and their products have been often discussed. The Customer Generated Content (the cornerstone of the Social Media movement) poses again a threat - like the Internet in the 90s - again some of the established industries like advertising/communication, printing and press. At the same time the conviction of an increasing number of businesses that crowdsourcing is not a bad idea after all, opens new opportunities to creative amateurs to actively take part in the business process of product development and marketing communication. I am personally glad witnessing the increasing enthusiasm about the New Media among my students (both undergraduates and graduates) in the University and outside. Two research projects about the adoption of Social Media by individuals and businesses are under way in my department; I hope to post some interesting findings for the readers of this blog soon. I will also try to share with the readers of this blog some of my thoughts about the basics of Social Media in the next posts starting with the definition of the Social Media and the identification of it as components of Web 2.0. Coming soon

Social Media = Empowerment

No one doubts that Social Media have empowered people and at the same time decreased our dependency for information from corporations, governements and experts. Interesting views and examples in Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

Social media: Is citizen empowerment always a good thing?

One of my suggestions closing my post Dominos Pizza Effect a few days ago was focused on the need that companies must seriously consider whether they need to regulate the usage of the Social Media by the staff. I wrote:

2. The incident (The Dominos Pizza employee videos) once more underlines the need to draft company guidelines of employee usage of Social Media as means of personal expression. Considering the increasing number of people seeking fame online I think that lack of organizational guidelines spells problems for companies that see their products and brands suffering because of the irresponsible behavior of some of their employees. It spells also problems to many idiots who cannot think of the consequences of their actions putting themselves and their employers in trouble.


Citizen and customer empowerment is a good thing. Yet among these empowered citizens there are some (or maybe a many) who are either stupid or have no sense of responsibility and morality. These people can bring themselves and other in troubles as we saw in the Dominos case (and many other cases actually). In many cases these people operate in organizations and systems ignorant of the dangers or ignorant as to how to deal with such situations.
These thoughts came to my mind after reading the unbelievable (at least from the European perspective) story titled My Students. My Cellphone. My Ordeal in the Washington Post online on the 19th of April. The case proves that things can go terribly wrong even in schools or universities.

If you take the time to read the story I recommend you to read also some of the comments and mainly a comment posted by ehkzu on the 20th 0f April highlighting some of the backgrounds of the case and giving some insights to the American judicial system; very informative comment (mainly for non-Americans) to understand how something like this can happen.

Crowdsourcing: utilize the customer's creativity

Taping the Customer Creativity (also known as Crowdsourcing) is one of the elements of my model outlining the main ways that marketers can engage the Social Media as Marketing tools.

Many examples of such initiatives are already known to those who follow what happens in the Social Media space. Most applications ( RedisignMe, Dell, Nokia, Samsung, TomTom, HP, Talpa, Google Android KLM, Starbucks, P&G, Robeco, threadless, LEGO, SAP, Kodak and many others) are focused on utilizing the customer wisdom in order to innovate. Another way to utilize the customer creativity is to ask customers to design advertisements for you or even commercials. A pioneer in this area is Current where amateur videos that appear on TV win money. Here in Holland we have also some interesting examples. A few months ago Nespresso tested two commercials as to the viewers' opinions before one of them appeared on TV (Source: MarketingFacts.nl)

Another nice example of using customer creativity is the Battle of Concepts , a Dutch (at least till this moment) platform allowing companies to organize competitions (mostly among creative business students) for solving real business problems. The site is getting very popular among students who can win up to 5.000 Euro but also among lecturers who can find there real case studies for their students! (I think to try this next year). Last but not least a new site called Creatad offers creative amateurs the possibility to make money by designing advertisements (printed or videos). I wonder if the American Marketing Association will be obliged to come soon with a new Marketing Definition taking into consideration the interactive nature of Marketing today as well as the way the New Marketing is creating value for the customer who becomes slowly marketer himself!

The Internet as University marketing tool

While the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as education strategy is a hot item receiving a lot of attention it seems that ICT as education marketing strategy receives a very low priority. This is my conclusion from many visits to university or in general educational web sites. The web sites of most universities are notoriously bad and structured around contexts and philosophies of the previous decade. With few exceptions most sites are targeting the internal rather than the external publics and often score very low in usability.
While I haven't found much research evidence of this I suspect that educational institutions are missing opportunities in the market place because of poor design of their web sites and bad visitor experience. In an article published in EDUCAUSE Quarterly Meredith Weiss comes to a similar conclusion. Weiss seems to agree with this thesis suggesting a number of approaches that could turn the educational web sites into sources of value. To my pleasure the author is suggesting, among other approaches, the methodology described in my 4S Web Marketing Mix model as a basis for designing of educational web sites.
In the age of the Social Media and customer empowerment educational institutions should seriously think about learning to use the new media effectively, adjusting their marketing to the requirements of today's student. Ignoring the Internet as marketing tool is a very serious strategic mistake.

Marketers: Back to basics (but what basics?)

MarketingCharts: “Marketing executives are going back to basics this year, putting renewed focus on satisfying and retaining customers and investing in research and insights, but they are “sick” of hearing about Web 2.0, according to a survey from Anderson Analytics conducted for the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG).”

It sounds too good to be true: “Shareholder Value”, “Outsourcing”, “Value for Money” (sometimes an euphemism for marketing cheap crap made in China), Tactics instead of Strategy and other mantras that have distorted the marketing thought and practice during the last 20 years seem to lose their glitter. Light at the end of the tunnel?

I am afraid not! Going back to “Basics” (like satisfying and retaining customers and investing in research and insights) is a tedious undertaking for most marketers today; the customer is not what it used to be, the market parameters and conditions have changed, the market power has migrated from the marketers to people and last but not least the image of marketing and peoples’ trust in Marketing has never been lower.

Marketing practitioners but also Marketing Academics have their share of blame for the marginalization of Marketing and its loss of focus. Professor Frederick E. Webster Jr. wrote in the Journal of Marketing (vol 62, October 2005): “ For the past two or three decades, the tactical dimension has dominated, with an emphasis on operational (i.e., input-level) marketing decision variables and short-term business performance results, especially sales volume and market share. Methodological rigor has been emphasized over problem importance … Data and Methodology have dominated academic research at the expense of both theory development and practical relevance, retarding the progress of the marketing discipline in a rapidly changing market environment”.

Back to the survey revealing the Top Five Trends for marketers. I can’t help to comment on the findings.
“#1. Insight and Innovation Key: Insight and innovation are seen as key to combat slumped economic and business cycles. Some 72% of respondents said innovation efforts would stay the same or increase, while 39% say their use of market research will increase this year. This is significant, given that most marketing experts agree it's imperative to innovate and mine insights during a recession”

While I fully agree that insight and innovation are vital I have a piece of advice for these marketers: Instead of getting sick of Web 2.0 (#4) they better try to find out what Web 2.0 really is. Social Media can be a low cost (handy in cases of “slumped economic and business cycles”) and very effective tool for tapping customer voice and creativity: the best basis of innovation! The Web (2.0) has already become the nr 2 news information channel and for most people is already the nr 1 marketing information channel.

“#2. Customers at Top of List: Basic customer satisfaction and retention remain the top two concepts of interest to marketers, followed by marketing ROI, brand loyalty and segmentation. Together, these represent a move back to the core principles of marketing”.

If “basic customer satisfaction” is really the top priority for marketers they have to sell the idea first to greedy shareholders! As to customer satisfaction and retention they must come up with some new ideas next to low cost. A piece of advice: they better realize that Web 2.0 is the place they have to be in order to find out if their customers are satisfied or what will make them satisfied.

“#3. Green Marketing, Global Warming Lose Importance: The topic of global warming showed the largest decrease in importance (dropping 14 places in the rankings), while green marketing showed a statistically significant 5% drop”.

If this is true I am afraid that marketers are once more out of touch with the new realities further marginalizing Marketing as a corporate function. You can’t blame marketers entirely though for such attitudes when the departing Bush administration has been the good example by consistently undermining these issues. Bad news for these marketers: A recent survey indicated that 85% of consumers having to chose between a product related to a cause and one not related to any cause would prefer the first one. Advice: read once more the new AMA definition of Marketing and ask yourself why it replaced the previous one in just 3 years!

“ #4. Marketers "Sick" of Web 2.0: Twice as many marketers are "sick" of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as "blogs" and "social networking," compared with last year's survey. However, marketers still admit they don’t know enough about it. This was evident in results from a November 2008 MENG social media study showing 67% of executive marketers consider themselves beginners when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes”.

This is my favorite: Marketers are sick of Web 2.0 but admit that they don’t know enough about it!! A statement that could come straight from Dilbert. No Comments.

“#5. Most Opportunity in China and among Boomers: China ranks as the #1 greatest area of opportunity (53%) for marketers with international responsibility, while India is a distant second, with votes from 17% of respondents. In terms of the best opportunity for customer targeting, execs still feel Boomers hold the most promise. But the perceived importance of Generation X and Generation Y grew significantly, compared with 2008 survey results”.

While I would agree about the Boomers and possibly about the X / Y generations I would be much more careful ranking China as #1 opportunity area. The effects of the financial crunch are already dramatic for China: sweetshops and all kinds of low labor cost outsourcing facilities (see #3 above) are closing. The low cost, export-based model seems unsustainable for developing the Chinese econoly in the long run. Western customers are cutting on spending and the reputation of Chinese products is deteriorating (see the latest milk scandal). Many draw a parallel between China today and Japan in the 70’s and 80’s but don’t forget that China is not Japan! I am afraid we have not seen the worst yet.

Conclusion: Marketing practitioners have realized that they drive in a dead-end road and try to turn back. They could better start the process of rehabilitation by first making some effort to understand the real world (and not to forget the Web) around them, keeping in mind that now the customer is the dominant party. Back to basics sounds good, only the basics have dramatically changed. The sooner they recognize this, the better the chances to survive in a world that is not any more what it used to be.

Customer Generated Content: not a buzzword anymore

In my previous post I referred to the importance of the fact that the Internet has become the nr. 2 information channel. An interesting detail well known to those following the effects of the Social Media / Web 2.0 is that the bulk of the online information published on line is not corporate information but customer generated one. Even more interesting is that this peer-to-peer content is becoming a main influencer of customer behavior. Some research findings:

> 59% of Internet users consider customer reviews to be more reliable than those from experts. Bizrate survey (2007):
> 62% of the US consumers read consumer-generated online reviews and 98% of them find these reviews reliable enough and
> 80% of these consumers say that reading these reviews has affected their buying intentions. Deloitte Touche, USA, 2008
> 85% of consumers will recommend a company with which they have a trusted relationship (Carlson Marketing).

A recent study of Nielsen Online reveals that the percentage of consumers reading customer generated reviews keeps growing: Nielsen announced that 81% of the online holiday shoppers have read product or retailer related reviews during the last holiday season. An amazing 20% increase from the figure above!
Other interesting findings of the study:
> 25% of US consumers spend over $ 500 online during the last holiday season.
> 33% of consumers visiting retailers sites wanted to compare prices between retailers before they visit their shop while 28% of the consumers wanted to see if the product was in stock in the shop
> 62 % of the consumers who bought from a particular web site have purchased from the same shop in the past
Such studies reveal every day new information as to the role of the web as a commercial platform. This information is a real treasure for those interested in optimizing their online presence. Businesses have no excuse any more to ignore the impact of the Internet on the behavior of their customers. The sooner they start looking more carefully to this data the better.

Power to the (online) consumer Part 2

Quick summary Part 1: The Internet has become an indispensable part of our life

Next to becoming the prime source of information for most of us the Internet influences in other ways our position as consumers. You will hardly find anyone around who does not have a personal story to tell about getting a better deal the last time he or she bought flying tickets, vacations, books, furniture, computers, new or second hand car, clothes, electrical appliances, kitchen equipment and anything else you can imagine, just by taking the time to do some search with Google before buying the product.
The whole situation is often labeled as “customer empowerment”, a situation attracting a good deal of the attention of both academics and practitioners. A symptom of changing attitudes: business people are not anymore surprised when you tell them that the era of the corporate market domination is over and that the existential, online consumer is on his way to become the dominant party of the marketing equation.

Customer empowerment has its roots to a number of evolutionary causes but it is primarily related to the Internet that made available and easily accessible large amounts of information that has led to a unique transparency of the marketplace, in combination with the ease of transacting with any supplier, in any part of the world as long as he offers a better deal. Recent developments around the social media (blogs, forums/bulletin boards, communities and social networks) have further contributed to customer empowerment by offering to consumers the option to further refine their product information and better assess the value of different offers by directly getting in touch with other users or experts and asking their opinion or experiences. The customer empowerment is also visible in the fact that the Internet has given consumers the opportunity to act as part of the supply chain, eliminating traditional intermediaries from the process. A simple example: The photo film and film processing industry are in the edge of extinction because of the digital technology replacing the film role and the Internet replacing the photo shop. Similar developments have affected a whole series of industries: airlines and Travel, banking, media, newspapers, telecom, employment services, printing and even the traditional high-street retailer.

The effects of customer empowerment on customer behavior but also on business processes and market structures are remarkable and far-reaching yet for many businesses it is not exactly clear what the consequences can be. A few tips in my next posting.

Next week: Part 3

Power to the (online) consumer Part 1

The Internet is hot again; having fully recovered from the boom and bust of the 90s the virtual economy has entered a new era of robust growth in all fronts; with over 1 billion users worldwide it is in several countries already the nr 2 retail channel while online advertising is the fastest growing advertising category. The broadband connections are expanding quickly (there were 285 million subscribers in 2006, expected to reach 560 mill. by 2011) and new technologies like Wiki and Ajax support a whole new family of interactive applications (known as Web 2.0 or social media) giving web users countless new options and capabilities.
The growing importance and influence of the Internet is clearly visible to consumers and businesses. As a teacher I experience a steady increase of requests for supervision of student assignments with subjects related to corporate online presence, mobile commerce and e-marketing during the last two years. On the other hand more and more literature and textbooks about E-Marketing are published every year (the last four months alone I was asked to review two concepts for textbooks about E-Commerce by different publishers).
The Internet has been fully integrated in our life as part of our decision making process. There is hardly anyone around using any other medium than the web when searching for information ranging from news, weather reports, medical information and train departure times to flying tariffs, movie theater schedules, telephone numbers, personal information or information about any person, product, brand or company everywhere in the world. According to a recent study 70% of the high income consumers use already the Internet as their nr 1 information source in the US.
Next week: Part 2