Posts tagged Consumers
YouTube Contest Case Study: Intel Generates Awareness, Engages Consumers, Drives Brand Lift
May 6th
Intel launched a five-month series of time lapse photography and slow motion videography contests, supported by TrueView ads and Promoted Channels. The campaign resulted in the highest conversion rate from ad to response the team had ever seen.
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Nearly 90% of Affluent Consumers Use Social Media [Study]
May 3rd
LinkedIn reports that affluents use social media primarily for professional reasons. One out of every two surveyed use social media to connect with other professionals, while one in three use social media to engage with professional content.
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WeChat Marketing: Another Way to Reach China’s Affluent Consumers
May 2nd
China’s unprecedented growth is attracting businesses from all corners, hoping to cash in on 250 million middle class consumers. In three short decades, it has become one of the most competitive marketplaces in the world. With the average Shanghai consumer exposed to more than three times the advertising of their British equivalent, marketers need to use their marketing [...]
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Dish Network/Sprint Combination: Good Or Bad For Consumers?
Apr 15th
Sprint is turning out to be the prettiest girl at the ball. Or at least the most available, anyway.
Following Japanese mobile carrier Softbank’s bid to acquire Sprint, the No. 3 mobile operator in the United States now has a new suitor looking to dance: Dish Network. The satellite TV operator has come up with a bid to buy Sprint that is several billion dollars higher than Softbank’s offer – and cliams that it can provide a better experience for consumers and a better return for investors.
(See also What’s The Real Impact Of Sprint’s Japanese Lifeline?)
According to The Wall Street Journal, Dish is offering Sprint $25.5 billion, about 13% more than the Softbank offer, which is for only 70% of the company. The business dynamics of the merger are fairly complex (with a fair amount of spectrum up for grabs, especially through spectrum wholesale operator Clearwire, which Sprint is the primary owner and Dish tried to acquire earlier this year).
But to us, there is just one truly pertinent question: Would this deal be good for consumers?
The Dynamic Of A Sprint-Dish Network
Sprint is a mobile carrier. As such, it owns and operates wireless spectrum, builds infrastructure, distributes hardware (such as smartphones) and dabbles in media, applications and entertainment. Sprint is in the same situation as the rest of the U.S. carriers: watching its market position turn into “dumb pipe.” Thats why it wants to expand its revenue sources into areas like video and audio, application ecosystems and services. The broader its product portfolio, the more attractive Sprint might be to consumers choosing a carrier.
On the other side, Dish is a satellite pay-television operator. That is about it. It offers programming, television hardware and subscriber packages to consumers and businesses. The problem with Dish is that the pay television market is growing slowly (and could soon begin contracting if cord-cutting becomes rampant) and highly competitive.
What would you get if you combined the two?
- A mobile network that can push premium video to smartphones, tablets, televisions and computers.
- The ability to, perhaps, give consumers the ability to use satellite connectivity for their data connections (in addition to terrestrial-based mobile networks based on GSM or CDMA technologies).
- A full range of consumer and business services, opening up opportunities for other companies and entrepreneurs to build on top of.
The combination would also look a lot like Sprint’s two biggest competitors, AT&T and Verizon.
Both Ma Bell and Big Red have television capabilities to the home. AT&T has U-Verse for television, which it bundles with its Internet and landline voice offerings. Verizon has its fiber-based FiOS network, which it has been building for most of the last decade. In one fell swoop, Dish could create a similar company profile and market it aggressively.
Let’s Not Forget Who We Are Dealing With
Dish Network does not have the most sterling of corporate reputations when it comes to dealing with consumers. This is the company that dropped AMC and other prominent cable channels (through AMC’s former owner Cablevision) from its roster – the subsequent lawsuit led to four years of litigation that concluded in October 2012. Dish Network is also locked in a battle with CBS over its Hopper DVR‘s ad-skipping capabilities.
Dish is the kind of company that doesn’t shy away from lawsuits with other media heavyweights, consumers be damned. Sprint, meanwhile, is seen as relatively consumer-friendly (at least compared to the other major U.S. mobile carriers). It offers some of the most competitive wireless plans with (almost) truly unlimited data for smartphones and tablets. It’s hard to say what kind of company Sprint-Dish might turn into, but Dish Network would be the surviving company in this deal, so you might expect its corporate culture to dominate.
A third major player in the mobile/television market could be a good thing for consumers. Despite its pugnacious reputation, Dish shares Sprint’s commitment to being a low-cost leader. If that adds up to lower prices for consumers, great. Unless it all gets tangled up in endless lawsuits.
With two major deals now on the table, it seems clear that Sprint is going to bought by someone relatively soon. Both suitors claim to have big plans for the carrier, but it’s too soon to be sure which one will win out and how the successful bidder will change the carrier.
Images courtesy Shutterstock.
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Study: U.K. Mobile Search Survey Reveals U.K. Consumers In Less Of A Hurry To Make Purchases Than U.S. Mobile Users
Apr 11th
Mobile-location based advertising network xAd joined forces with mobile call measurement provider Telmetrics to release their first U.K. Mobile Path-to-Purchase study, focusing on U.K. mobile search behavior. Conducted by Nielsen, the online study, surveyed 1,500 U.K. smartphone and tablet users to…
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Only 29% Of Consumers Regularly Use Mobile Devices To Find Local Businesses
Mar 11th
The staggering growth in smartphone and iPad/tablet usage is changing the way consumers behave. Having these powerful devices glued to our hands 18 hours a day changes how we manage our lives, stay in touch with friends and consume media. It also affects how we find and engage with businesses and…
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Google AdWords New Enhanced Campaigns Connect Ads With Multi-Device Consumers
Feb 6th
Google today announced an upgrade to AdWords called Enhanced Campaigns that will allow advertisers to target consumers more efficiently with ads based on context like location, device type, and time of the day, in a single campaign.
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Nest, The iPod Of Smart Home Tech, Preps Consumers For The Future
Feb 1st
Nest is doing very well. The company that makes the eponymous smart thermostat just closed on an $80 million round of funding, according to GigaOm. It’s now shipping 40,000 to 50,000 thermostats every month, which is apparently enough to win the confidence of Google Ventures and Venrock.
Call it the iPod of smart home technology. And not just because the Nest was literally conceived by the man who led the iPod team at Apple for several years. Like the iPod, the Nest thermostat is a disruptive technology planting itself into the lives of everyday, non-techie consumers, where it will slowly sprout into something much bigger. With the iPod, Apple popularized the digital music players among the masses and paved the way for a series of other, even more important devices. The Nest is about to do the same thing.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Nest is an Internet-connected thermostat that purports to learn its owners habits and configure the house’s cooling and heating patterns more intelligently. The result is a more energy efficient home and, as the company proudly proclaims, lower utility bills. It’s not the first smart energy management product to hit the market, but it is among the sleekiest and easiest for everyday consumers to understand and use. Sound familiar?
Home automation. Wi-Fi-connected appliances. The Internet of things. These tech industry buzz concepts can get the crowd going at conferences like Le Web and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but ask your mother or a random colleague what they think about them. Normal people don’t even know what this stuff is. But soon they will.
Plenty of startups, cable companies and telcos are gearing up for the smart home revolution, prepping their own remote lighting control, video security and energy automation features. Communications companies from Comcast to Verizon have begun offering these services as an add-on to customers’ existing cable and phone bills.
As cool as smart thermostats, security cams and remote controlled door locks are, they’re only the beginning. The list of Wi-Fi connected household appliances keeps growing. An Internet-capable toaster or washing machine might seem silly, but the super-connected homes of the future will be much more energy efficient, easier to manage and secure. Soon we’ll move onto automated cat feeders and plant watering systems – and from there we’ll graduate to Jetsons-style domestic robots.
If any one product is poised to popularize smart home tech, it’s the Nest. Its clean design, easy installation and availability from big retailers give it a prime position from which to plant a ticking, hyper-futuristic time bomb.
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Marketers, Consumers Favor Email Over Social Media [Report]
Jan 29th
Despite all the newfangled channels and technology by which marketers can reach consumers in a digital capacity today, email is still the most effective and inclusive, according to new research from ExactTarget.
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BlackBerry Balance: A New BlackBerry 10 Feature For Perpetually Connected Consumers
Jan 18th
Guest author Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research.
One of the most delightful product features I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month came from an unexpected source: the new BlackBerry 10 operating system from Research In Motion (RIM).
While RIM is battling from behind with BB10, there’s a lot to like about this product, from the super-smart contextual prediction keyboard to the super-efficient BlackBerry Hub. The feature of BB10 that I like best is called “BlackBerry Balance,” which allows users to selectively turn off work-related email and apps for specified periods of time. BlackBerry Balance is significant for three reasons:
1. It’s designed for consumers (workers), not IT administrators. This is a big, big deal for RIM, a company known for making products that were favorites of IT shops. In the past, IT administrators had all the power over corporate BlackBerrys -they could not only kill a user’s device remotely but also could limit access to features like the app store.
With BB10, it’s IT admins who are in a box – they can give users access to corporate email and applications, but those are siloed on the device, and BlackBerry Balance lets workers decide when to turn work off while still using their devices for fun stuff.
2. It puts workers in control of their work-life balance. The BlackBerry Hub, which unifies communications and alerts from text messages, calls, email and social networks, makes communicating very efficient (for example, you can reply to tweets and Facebook messages directly from the Hub without opening separate applications), but it could easily be overwhelming too. With BlackBerry Balance, consumers don’t have to fear they’ll be bombarded with work-related messages when they use the Hub on personal time.
3. It’s a model for other mobile OSes to follow. Other than Apple’s “Do Not Disturb” feature on iOS, there are very few features I’ve seen on mobile operating systems that do anything to assuage the pains of the perpetually connected consumer. It’s great to see RIM leading here, and I hope to see other companies follow with their own innovative features.
Smartphones enable perpetual connectivity, but they should also empower consumers to set their own demands for how and when they want to be connected.
Image from BlackBerry YouTube video.
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