Google's Think Insights on Word of Mouth Advertising

Google's Think Insights recently published their study "Word of Mouth Advertising and the Internet". Based on the fact that there are 2.4 billion conversations per day that involve a brand name totally 3.3 billion mentions of brands, Google did a study to look at the effects of the internet on these brand conversations and the effect on Word of Mouth (WOM). They had 3,000 adults respond to questions on how they used media or marketing sources before the conversation (triggered or sparked the brand talk), during the conversation (checked facts, referenced a source, shared content), and after the conversation (shared more widely, took action, or to learn more). Here are some of their key findings:

• 94% of Word of Mouth still take place face-to-face
• Google was the #1 source for sparking WOM conversations and the #1 place for finding more information after the conversation
• WOM conversations that start with search are more 25% more credible and 17% more likely to lead to a purchase than that those stared with social media sites

You can see the full report here. It's interesting that vast majority of these brand conversations are still taking place in person. And, it makes sense because I see my closest friends, those that influence me the most,  in person more than online. I'm not surprised that Google is the top site for sparking interest for these conversations, it is the top search engine. According to the study, search (and therefore Google) are still the most referenced sites used before, during, or after a conversation. Social Media is lagging back at 3.2%, do you think this will change in the next few years? Will my friends see where I'm shopping, eating, and what brands I "Like" and make purchase decisions based on that?  Is it still Word of Mouth if we aren't really talking about it, just doing it and being seen? I still think search will be a huge factor after the WOM conversation for research. We know what Google thinks, what do you think?

Casual Friday: Decide

Are you in the market for a new TV, laptop, or camera but can't decide if this is the right time to buy? Will a new bigger, badder, lighter, faster model be coming out tomorrow? Is this really the lowest price or will the price fall next week? With these tough questions looming, it can be hard to decide when to buy. These are big purchases that we tend to keep around for a few years. Gain the confidence you need to decide when and what to buy using Decide. Decide uses fancy models to predict product releases. The predict future product releases "by matching hundreds of thousands of devices to their model lineages and applying advanced machine learning and text mining algorithms." Their price predictions will save you a ton of money by looking at billions of price movements in over 40 distinct factors. Use their mobile site in the store as you shop or set up alerts so you'll know exactly when to pull the trigger on that big purchase.

Right now there are only 3 categories, but you can vote on categories you would like to see added.

Doodling: Your Newest Crush Crutch

Remember how several years ago you thought, “Huh?” the first time your friends told you to start Googling for everything, and shortly thereafter you never remembered how you survived without it?  Well if you’re not Doodling yet, you’re missing out.

Most of us have chaotic and packed schedules, so the resourceful people behind Doodle decided to create a digital lasso of sorts for herding us cats.  You can register for a free account (but you don’t have to!).  Just use their software to create a poll of time blocks in the increment(s) of your choice, send the generated poll URL to your selected contacts, receive email updates as they mark their free/booked times, book your own availability as necessary, view the results, and voila!  You now know when everyone can get together.

One caveat:  If all of your colleagues become Doodle addicts too, then you run the risk of inadvertently overbooking yourself by answering that yes, your Tuesday afternoon is free, on multiple polls.  To mitigate this in the future, I sincerely hope Doodle figures out how to code extra time into my 24-hour day.  When they do that, I will most assuredly buy a subscription to their premium service.

Depressing Wednesday: Dying Industries

I promise not to make Depressing Wednesday a weekly issue, but it seemed fitting since I want to highlight the IBIS World report on the Dying Industries.  Some of them won't seem all that surprising. IBIS World gave this distinct honor of extinction to these industries because during the past 10 years they have experienced a sizeable contraction inrevenue and the number of establishments and their 5 year forecast predicts the same fate. Each of these industries has faced one or more of the three detrimental industry factors, including external competition, advances in technology and industry stagnation.

Here's the top 10, or should we say bottom 10:

• Wired Telecom Carriers
• Mills
• Newspaper Publishing
• Apparel Manufacturing
• DVD, Game, Video Rental
• Manufactured Home Dealers
• Video Postpr0duction Services
• Record Stores
• Formal Wear & Costume Rental

What is interesting is that no matter how dire the industries as a whole, IBIS World points out that not all individual players in the industry are about to succumb. According to their analyst, "Industry operators that protect their strengths in certain market segments, focus on niche opportunities and capitalize on the dwindling number of competitors often reap the strongest rewards of sole operation, market survival and profitability."

Get a WickedStart for Your Startup

If you are starting your own business (or your users are entrepreneurs), then check out WickedStart. The site serves as a free startup incubator to help you start a business. Users can create a free account and get a 10 step startup checklist, business plan template, guide to useful resources, and a blog to get guidance from successful business owners. WickedStart was created by entrepreneurs that understand how hard it can be to figure out where or how to start the process after the business idea. The template doesn't answer the questions, it asks the questions that need answers. It's a timeline and roadmap that can be tailored to a quick start with little cash or a larger endeavor.  Wondering if you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Start by taking the WickedStart questionnaire to see how you score.

Well, HelloFax

Everyone has the same problem with signing and sending electronic documents, you have to print the document, sign the document, scan the document and email it or find the fax machine (mine is in the basement of the office building). Ugh, I'm tired just thinking about it. So many wasted steps and so much wasted time. HelloFax is a new way to sign and email or fax documents. You can pick your own fax number and send and receive faxes from your computer. There are 3 levels of monthly plans if you will be doing a lot of faxing this is way to go. If you don't fax very often, go with the free plan and send up to 5 pages free (if you need to send more you can pay just 99¢ per additional page. Plus, all the plans include unlimited free document signing. You can use your mouse to create your signature (although that didn't work all that well for me) or you can take a picture with your smartphone and send it to them. I love the flexibility this gives me, and if I go with a monthly plan there is no long term commitment. Definitely going to try it out.

GrowthPanel is a Good Thing

While free fashion advice from your geriatric aunt would likely be unwelcome, free business advice from professionals with decades of experience in leading SMBs/SMEs would likely be met with open arms.  Enter GrowthPanel.com, a “web-based marketing platform that blends marketing content with project management for intelligent marketing management.” I give them major kudos for giving away a significant host of free learning materials and tools to potential customers.  You can download their Strategic Marketing Process ebook at no charge, plus their Marketing Exercises, spanning over two dozen functions that any business should be doing well, e.g. search engine optimization, developing brand architecture, etc.  (Full disclosure: I did not discover GrowthPanel myself.  Dr. Bailey at UT’s School of Information assigned the Develop Your Media Kit during a graduate Administration course I took from her.)

One thing’s certain- GrowthPanel loves lists.  Bulleted overviews, check lists, short answer lists, these exercises are broken into readily comprehended and tackle-able segments that will have a working group thinking without being overwhelmed.  The resultant material generated from the exercises can be applied by almost any institution, commercial or non-profit, for real world self-evaluation and use.



Hidden Treasures of Yahoo Finance

It's rare that I refer anyone to Yahoo over Google, but Yahoo Finance really has it going on. Two things I think are really great are their IPO Calendar and their Analyst Performance Center. On their IPO Calendar I can see who has recent filings and withdrawals as well as initial pricing and expected IPO dates. They've also got post-IPO performance over the last 3 months, 6 months and 1 year broken down by the best and the worst performers. You can research IPOs by company or industry and get the latest IPO news. Pretty handy stuff and it's all available for free.

I also really like their Analyst Performance Center. Here I can find a list of analysts from all the big investment banks. Their lists are searchable by analyst name, investment firm, industry and company stock. Knowing what analysts cover a certain industry can be really helpful in your research. For instance, I can go to Yahoo's page for Goldman Sachs and see which analyst covers the Hotel & Leisure industry and they'll show me what stocks he/she covers and in some cases even ratings for the analyst based on the accuracy of their earnings estimates or returns of their stock recommendations.

Newspaper Map

Check out Newspaper Map from Great Name. The map includes over 10,000 online newspapers from all over the world. And, most of the maps can be translated, so get the scoop straight from the local newspaper. The easiest way to navigate is  to enter the name of a newspaper in the search-box. If you don't know the name of the paper, you can zoom into the location with a double click of the mouse. Click on a marker and then select your language of choice, and the local newspaper pops up in a new window.

The Market Value of Mother Nature

NPR’s Marketplace radio show recently aired a news report that, in spite of its brevity, was quite interesting.  Called, “Paying nature to do it’s thing,” it touched upon the efforts of the Virginia Department of Forestry to restore some of the state’s farmland to forest by paying (in this instance) $1000/acre to the farmer who owns the property to allow his land to be taken out of farm production and planted with 1500 pine trees, because the forest would provide the valuable service of, “filtering out and preventing erosion and sedimentation; it also helps clean out the air.” The broadcast used the term “ecosystem service,” and I immediately became curious and decided do a bit of digging into the topic (no pun intended).  Here are a few interesting points:

1.  Susan Ruffo & Peter Kareiva concisely define the concept in an editorial called, “Using science to assign value to nature,” from the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment:

The idea of “ecosystem services” – identifying and quantifying the resources and processes that nature provides for people – gives us a framework to measure nature’s contribution to human well-being, and to understand the cost of its loss. It provides a credible way to link nature and people that goes beyond emotional arguments and points us toward practical solutions.”

2.  Other states are also taking notice and calculating what their natural resources are worth.  Case in point: New Jersey.  Written after a two-year study, a report called, “The Value of New Jersey’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital," determined the individual values of the state’s wetlands, marine ecosystem, forests, urban green space, beaches, agricultural land, and open fresh water and riparian buffers, and concluded that the combined services provided these systems totaled to roughly 19.4 billion per year in 2004 dollars.

3.  And on the global scale?  “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital,” published by a team of researchers in Nature in 1997, is arguably one of the foremost articles in this emergent crossroads where the ecologic/economic disciplines meet, and they concluded that- at a conservative estimate- the economic value of the entire biosphere averages out to $33 trillion per year.  Plug that number into any inflation calculator now, and by today’s dollar value we should write our planet a yearly rent check for over $45 trillion.

4.  Want to get in on the eco-calculating action? The Natural Capital Project is a patnership among a handful of prominent environmental institutions, and they have developed InVEST, a software that, "enables decision-makers to assess the tradeoffs associated with alternative choices and to identify areas where investment in natural capital can enhance human development and conservation in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems." E.g., "Corporations, such as bottling plants, timber companies, and water utilities, can use InVEST to decide how and where to make investments to protect their supply chains."

The more effort and green we invest toward maintaining our planet now, the more green our future ROI will be.  Literally.

Photo credit : (cc-by-nc-nd) Bruno Monginoux / www.Landscape-Photo.net : nature and urban photography, free stock photos

Cities of Opportunity

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Cities of Opportunity 2011 study compares 26 cities on over 10 indicators with 66 different variables - everything from ease of starting a business to end of life care to number of libraries with public access. PWC doesn't think of this study as a competition of cities. The "analysis of the trajectory of 26 cities, all capitals of finance, commerce and culture—and through their performance, seeks to open a window on what makes cities function best." PWC Overall Score Top 10:

• New York
• Toronto
• San Francisco
• Stockholm
• Sydney
• London
• Chicago
• Paris
• Singapore
• Hong Kong

Use the PWC tools to create your own rankings  or correlation heat map based on the criteria of your choice.

bizologie Favorite Apps: Broadway Edition

The Tony Awards are coming up on Sunday and we've got our tap shoes shined and our jazz hands ready. Let's take a look at a few apps that will help us navigate The Great White Way the next time we're in The Big Apple. iBroadway offers show information including venues, scheduling and ticket information. On the opening page, their search feature allows you to narrow by genre so that you can search by musicals, plays, dance, comedy or drama. Once you've chosen a show, you can buy tickets, get a map to the theater, watch videos and find information about the cast. You'll also see details such as runtime and audience. You can also connect direct from here to iTunes if you'd like to purchase music from the show. iBroadway is free for iPhone.

ILoveNYTheater from The Broadway League offers similar features and also includes a guide to restaurants and hotels in the Theater District. One cool feature of this app is that you can purchase tickets "direct from the theatres' official ticketing offices in real time without broker markups." ILoveNYTheater is also free for iPhone.

"At The Booth" was called "The best thing to happen to New York theater since the introduction of the TKTS booth!" by Entertainment Weekly. If you've never been to the TKTS booth in NYC, it's a big ticket center in Times Square where you can buy same-day, discounted tickets to Broadway Shows. "At The Booth" will not only tell you which shows are on sale and at what discount, but also how long the line is! Trust us, if you've never been to TKTS, knowing all of this information ahead of time is really handy. "At The Booth" is 99¢ for iPhone and Android.

Not jetting off to NYC any time soon? No worries. TheaterMania will tell you which Broadway shows are heading to your city. Cities include Boston, Chicago, DC, Las Vegas, London, LA, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle. TheaterMania is free on iTunes.

IDC Tech Talk: IT Productivity

In this IDC Tech Talk Bob Parker, Group Vice President, Manufacturing & Retail Insights, discusses IT Productivity in the Manufacturing and Retail Industry. Reviews of IT spending data collected over the last 10 years make it look like IT spending has been taking cuts, but as Bob points out it's really only that IT spending has not been growing as fast as revenue because IT departments can now do more with less.  What investments in IT allowed  for that increase in productivity?  The big three are, virtualization, business intelligence, and longer refresh rates on hardware. What does the future look like? Bob thinks more IT productivity is yet to be gained with cloud computing, integrated decision environments, and smart devices (mobility). For a look at all 6 factors that drove IT productivity over the last 10 years, and the 6 factors could drive more IT productivity over the next years, check out the IT Cost Challenge for the Coming Decade.

Casual Friday: Cell Phone Cases We Think Are Fun (And One That Might Be Healthy)

The only thing more fun than finding new apps for your smartphone is buying clothes for it. Here are some cases we think are stylish, functional and one that might even be good for you. Like Kate Spade's cute handbags and dresses, her phone cases are cute and come in all sorts of fun colors that we think are great for summer. We really like the retro phone and the movie-themed ones:

If you're looking for durability and protection, you might want to check out Otterbox's Defender Series:

If you're planning to spend some time by the pool this summer, you might want to check out DryCASE for your phone or tablet. They keep your electronic devices waterproof up to 100 ft. We actually tested this one this past weekend by throwing our Nook into the pool in the DryCASE. Worked like a charm--thank goodness!

The Bounce Case from Case Mate & Pong, "reduces normal cellphone radiation measured in SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) by at least 60% by redirecting your cell phone’s electromagnetic energy away from your head. Once redirected, the radiation quickly dissipates and poses no threat to you or those around you.":

Happy Birthday Wolfram Alpha!

We at bizologie are big fans of Wolfram Alpa, as you can see here, here, here, and here.  We heard through the grapevine known as the Wired Epicenter Blog that this new engine just turned two, so we decided to give it some attention in honor of its birthday, and discuss it in greater detail.  For the uninitiated, what exactly is Wolfram Alpha? The FAQ page says, “It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”  In Wired's entry, author Ryan Singel goes on to say, that the man behind the engine, Stephen Wolfram is encouraged by the fact that “…people are trying to use Wolfram Alpha for complicated things like comparing the economies of two countries.”

Type in a topic on which you want to know more, and Wolfram Alpha returns to you a shiny and concise report on said topic with key facts, statistics, charts, illustrations, annotations for how it derived the data, etc.  Even better, you can save each segment of the report as its own image, or you can download the entire thing as a PDF file.  (Oh, and the Random button on the homepage is both fascinating and addictive).

For business researchers wanting to learn what features it offers and how to learn the ropes of entering queries, visit the Examples by Topic page, wherein the Money & Finance, and  Socioeconomic Data categories will make one hot and bothered.

To give a balanced perspective though, Wolfram Alpha does have its limitations.  The takeaway for business researchers:  don’t expect it to generate the several hundred/thousand dollar reports sold by the friendly neighborhood analyst company.  For example, if you search: Smartphone Market, your current results page will have the utterance:  “Commercial Products- Development of this topic is under investigation...”.  It then comes as little surprise too that, while the engine touts itself as being great at comparisons, it has a hard time comparing public and private companies.  Search: Hilton, Marriott, and you receive only the financial facts of Marriott (which is public).  Search: Hilton vs Marriott, and you will get in return the digital equivalent of a blank stare.

Overall though, Wolfram Alpha is an ambitious entity that delivers very well on topics within its current scope of expertise, and bizologie will be eagerly enjoying its evolution. We wish Wolfram Alpha, "...and many more"!



Missing Drop.io? Try Ge.tt

If you're like us, you've been mourning the loss of Drop.io. We loved the simplicity of not having to create an account to quickly upload a few files and share the link easily. Luckily today we discovered Ge.tt. Ge.tt is really simple to use and you don't have to create an account, though you can if you want to keep your uploaded files for more than 30 days. It's got instant sharing so you don't have to wait for files to upload before you share via Facebook,  Twitter, URL or email. Each file has a "view"  option so users can access the information via their browser or download it if they like. If you've created an account, you can also see how many users have accessed files you've uploaded. We've created a Ge.tt page on "Big Data" that you can check out here. And you can check out Ge.tt in action in the video below.

High Gas Prices for Memorial Day

bizologie took a road trip to the beach for the holiday weekend. With gas prices averaging around $3.80 that took a bite out of the vacation budget. We weren't the only ones feeling the pinch of course,  according to the Associated Press households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. Compare that to spring 2009 when they spent just $201. Right now every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar goes toward gas, that is a 40% bigger bite than normal. And, unfortunately these prices won't just be effecting this trip, analysts expect average prices for 2011 to come in higher than the previous record of $4.11 in 2008. What is hard to believe is that just one year ago the average cost of gas was only $2.74. Oh, the good old days.

Hopefully the high gas prices won't keep you from enjoying the road this summer. Check the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report, where you can get current costs for a trip and even map your trip and get prices at stations along your route.

Casual Friday: Live Purchasing

In case you needed another way to spend your free time, here’s one interesting way: live purchasing.  The Zappos.com website has a Real-Time Order Map that it dubbed Mappos, which allows you to see what individuals (kept anonymous of course) are ordering in real time all over the country.  You gaze at a map of the U.S. as images of merchandise, pointing to an originating city, pop up on the screen for several seconds before winking out.  If you feel so inclined, you can even vote thumbs up/down on the merchandise that was purchased, though Zappos doesn’t detail how that feedback is used.  Not only is Mappos addictive to watch, but it arguably exemplifies the oldest selling ploy in the book, aka, “Everyone’s doing it.” They are not the only company to have employed technology to track live purchasing.  In an excellent Vogue article from the June 2010 issue called “High Clicks,” Sarah Mower interviewed Natalie Massenet, the founder of swanky luxury clothing etailer Net-a-Porter, a company which also tracked live purchasing behind the scenes, and presumably still does today.  Mower had the following to say about Net-a-Porter's live purchasing system:

“…The whole office is wired for sound and video. Everyone in the company here, in New York, and the distribution centers can see what's selling, when, where, what the turnover is. Go look at the screens.  They're mesmerizing.

Positioned in the sight lines of every desk, they display a visual of Google Earth, and every time someone makes a purchase, a Net-a-Porter bag pops up on the location. On the screen above, the shopper's order is pictured, along with how much she spent, where she lives, and a running tally of the day's takings. It's 11:00 A.M. London time now, and someone in Yekaterinburg, Russia, is buying towering $1,200 Fendi shoes. In NYC where it's 6:00 A.M. a woman drops $3,600 on Isabel Marant. A pair of $1,290 Bottega Veneta sandals is being ordered up in Athens (though the country's nearly bankrupt); a plunging, multicolored $600 Melissa Odabash swimsuit is going to soccer-wife country in Altrincham, Manchester.”

Needless to say, it seems that live purchasing could serve multiple functions, acting also as an ongoing morale-booster for employees who sell and process merchandise.  It will be interesting to see the extent to which this trend catches on and evolves in the future.

Google's Think Insights on Tablet Users

Google's Think Insights recently published their study "Understanding Tablet Device Users". Some of the stats presented are exactly what you'd think like tablet users report decreased time spent on their laptop/desktop. But there are a few interesting stats:

• The most popular activities are gaming, searching for info and emailing
• The least popular activities include shopping, reading e-books and consuming entertainment
• 1 in 3 respondents spends more time with their tablet than watching TV

You can see the full report here. Are you using your tablet for anything interesting or have any favorite apps? Tell us about it in the comments.

Make Splitting the Check Fun

Don't feel bad if you and your friends are having problems with the bistro math at dinner. The MIT guys can't do it either. They can develop special tablet to do it for you though. Yes, I know you already have an app for that, but E La Carte is banking on their tablet wooing restaurants by doing much more and raising revenue. The E la Carte tablet allows customers to order, play games, get wine suggestions, split the check, figure the tip, and even pay the bill at that table.  LotsOLoot.com reported that in a pilot program in six restaurants, customers at E la Carte tables spent 10% to 12% more than those diners at other tables and tips went up too.  The company has raised over $1 million in funding from investors, and will be launching tablets in 20 restaurants on the West coast. The big news is that the company has a partnership with a large restaurant chain that hasn’t yet been announced, but apparently some Applebee’s execs participated in the first funding round, so that might give us a pretty good hint.