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The markup of some items might surprise you. Coupon site Sumocoupon analyzed some consumer data and put together an infographic revealing the markup of 37 products.
The site calculated the data based on information collected from production pricing reports on news sites like CNN and the New York Times. While this isn't the most scientific of methodologies, they're open about their sources and you can check out the data from each report.
More than products, they found that services have the highest markup. This is pretty obvious, but the numbers are a little surprising. For example, interior painting had a markup of 6,329%. Companies charge thousands, but the supplies cost a little over a hundred bucks, according to their data....
The number of the religious unaffiliated in the United States has doubled since 1990. Almost no Americans used the Internet in 1990, while 87 percent use it today.
Is the Internet causing us to lose our religion?
Yes, says Allen Downey, professor at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. He analyzed data and found that the statistical increase of those who claim no religious affiliation can be partially explained by an increase in Internet use....
Marketers spend most of their time trying to appeal to their target demographics, but when it comes to women, many of them are missing the mark. Given that women make up half the population and have a disproportionate amount of purchasing power, isn’t it in your best interest to try to understand them?
Here are 23 surprising facts you probably didn’t know about women and advertising. - Women account for 85% of consumer purchases (She-conomy) - Despite this, 91% of women say advertisers don’t understand them...
"There are many tricks being missed by marketers where older people are concerned."
These were the thoughts of one of the panellists who took part in our live discussion at Marketing’s Older, Richer, Wiser conference, aimed at helping brands and marketers better understand over-55s. With more time and money to spend than most, the over-55s are a desirable market – so why are brands still missing the mark when targeting this group?
Another panellist summed up the reason: "Sometimes I feel quite angry that the whole of the older generation is lumped into being over-55." Put simply, the ‘over-55s’ are not a homogenous group and marketers, advertisers and researchers should not treat them as such....
Creating satisfying interaction experiences for buyers today is proving to be more complex than most organizations had guessed. Various surveys and reports continue to put satisfaction with content and information at or below 35% range.
The translation for me, when factoring in the qualitative interviews conducted with buyers over the past year, is not only is there a lack of satisfying content, but also a lack of meaningful experiences...
Most online mentions of companies by consumers are neutral, rather than overtly positive or negative, according to a recent report from mention.
The study, which was based on an analysis of 1 billion global mentions of 200,000 companies across social networks and websites, found 75.5% of all interactions to be run-of-the-mill, such as questions about products and requests for customer service.
Of the remaining mentions, 17.6% were clearly positive and only 5.8% were clearly negative....
Introducing a new product is essentially an exercise in persuading people to change their behavior. Many companies try to tackle this challenge by making the functional benefits of the new seem so much more compelling than the old. But this approach rarely works. After all, how many of us as children enjoyed eating our vegetables just because our moms said they were better for us than desert?
But how much quicker would your attitude have adjusted if your best friend had dared you to eat them? Or if eating broccoli had suddenly become the newest craze in your fifth-grade class?
A new form of social data that harnesses the power of peer pressure is emerging as a potentially powerful way to change behavior and spur the growth of new categories of products. It works because peer pressure data goes beyond demonstrating the functions of a product to satisfy deeply powerful emotional or social needs we may not even realize we have....
The super-connectedness of global communications has challenged how companies interact, engage and maintain relevance and trust with their key audiences and the public-at-large.
How do companies break through the incredibly high volume of marketing noise to sustain awareness, relevance and preference with consumers? What do consumers care about — and respond to most positively through their actions and choices — when it comes to brand engagement? If consumer loyalty and advocacy are signs of trust, what shapes trust between consumers and a company or brand? What are the characteristics and motivations of the social consumer? What moves them from likes to wants to needs to love it, gotta have it?
Our view is this: consumer choices are increasingly driven by new factors of influence which are not entirely driven by the image that a company markets or projects , but rather, through the demonstrated impact of its actions and behaviors. This is core to our hypothesis about what motivates the social consumer to act....
People are moving to mobile in droves, but market researchers haven't followed. GetFeedback and SurveyMonkey want to change that.
The days of lengthy online surveys are numbered, and the startup GetFeedback and online survey leader SurveyMonkey are both poised to benefit.
Countless millions of dollars are spent validating the mobile revolution with adoption statistics and usage metrics. Ironically, the field of market research itself appears to have overlooked this shift, relying on outdated technology and techniques that are increasingly at odds with mobile attention spans.
According to Forrester Research, just 17% of researchers had taken their survey processes mobile as of December 2012. The most obvious side effect is falling response rates. But businesses also risk alienating existing or prospective customers by seeming out-of-step with their communications preferences. There's a lot of money at stake: A staggering $18.9 billion on a global basis is spent annually on telephone polls, online surveys, questionnaires, and other market research, says the Council of American Survey Research Organizations. Roughly $2 billion is spent on online surveys in the United States alone, according to the market research firm IBISWorld....
Technology has changed a lot in the last 30 years—even the last three! Today’s consumer is more connected than ever, thanks to the proliferation of digital devices and platforms. Content once available only via specific channels, such as print and broadcast television, can today be delivered to consumers through their multiple connected devices.
These changes are driving a media revolution and blurring traditional media definitions. In fact, Americans now own four digital devices on average, and the average U.S. consumer spends 60 hours a week consuming content across devices. In Nielsen’s Digital Consumer Report, we explore this transformation and examine how the everyday lives of consumers are now intertwined with the digital world....
At the end of 2013, InSites Consulting (together with data collection partner GMI) asked consumers around the globe to share their 3 priorities for brands in 2014. It is clear that consumers want companies to offer them the best possible product/service (35%) and a great customer service (20%) above everything else. And to make that happen, they want companies to actively listen to their needs and wishes (16%). Second, being innovative (15%), eco-friendly (15%) and honest (14%) are greatly valued by the global consumer...
Sorry, you can’t blame those amazing holiday deals...
Well, this may be the craziest new finding we’ve heard of in a while: Women tend to spend more money after they’ve touched men’s boxers, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
For the three-part study, researchers in Belgium wanted to see if sexual cues—In this case men’s underwear—affected a woman’s shopping habits. Surprisingly, study authors found that when women touched boxers—as opposed to other garments like a shirt—they tended to disregard price tags and pay more money than necessary for things like chocolate, a chair, and a keyboard. The same wasn’t true if the women only saw the boxers...
It’s certainly been awhile since my promise to post a social media statistics update every month… but better late than never right? Here are 83 awesome statistics on Social Media Marketing, B2B, Enterprise, Small Business, Blogging, Mobile, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest to start your 2014. STATISTICS! You love them, I love them, and here they are in all their glory...
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There is a Swedish word that has been on the tip of our collective tongue here at Seymourpowell for quite some time now. It is a word that describes a philosophy of life that pervades Swedish culture; a word which, we believe, could be a powerful design term if manifested effectively in consumers lifestyles. That word is Lagom – the Swedes idea of achieving a balance between what we want and what we need – life in moderation.
At Seymourpowell we regularly monitor emerging consumer groups. In recent months we have noted a rise of the Lagom – a considerate consumer looking for a simpler way of life with just enough. As stuffocation reaches a saturation point, people are looking for ways to rationalise. Pairing back becomes the new priority, they are looking for ways to simplify and reduce on all levels....
“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles” - Sun Tzu
Business can learn a lot from ancient military wisdom. Armies have been using spies for millenia to report on the other side's strategies, weaponry, supplies, morale, and general's hangover.
While binoculars and a fake mustache may have been the most important tools for most of spying history, the internet age has provided us with somewhat more advanced tools to keep track of our competitors. Take a look at the following list of free(mium) tools you can use to unravel the actions and underlying strategies of your competition....
The more you know about your customers, the better. If you know what makes people tick, the better off your business will be. Having at least a basic understanding of consumer psychology and why they buy specific products is a valuable asset for marketers.
As an online marketer looking to improve conversions, you need to learn why people purchase your products or services. Viewing case studies can provide ideas on tweaks that have worked for others, but if you don’t actually learn or hypothesize why one tweak increased or decreased conversions, you’ll never actually become better. Good A/B tests require proper documentation and a “post analysis” when the test is complete.
Today’s infographic lists 10 psychological studies that have been proven to convert consumers to saying “yes”....
Audio consumption is at its all-time easiest. The technological capabilities we carry in our pockets daily are truly awesome and, increasingly, companies are looking to put more content in our eyes and ears as conveniently as possible.
We're ready for it too. Apple's purchase of Beats is a $3 billion investment in the public's listening habits, as is Amazon's new streaming service, not to mention Sub Pop and other labels' embrace of the Drip.fm digital subscription service.
The evidence is obvious but to move us from the anecdotal to the factual, Edison Research has released a survey to quantify just how much Americans are listening to music. According to their "Share of Ear" study, most U.S. residents listen to roughly four hours and five minutes of audio each day. That's divided between broadcast radio (52 percent); owned music such as downloads, vinyl, CDs, and tapes (20 percent); streaming services such as Beats Music, Spotify, and Pandora (12 percent); satellite radio (8 percent); podcasts (2 percent); and whatever else falls into the "other" category, like audiobooks (2 percent)....
...Let’s start with the first excerpt shall we for this speaks directly to the ominous title of this article. Yes, while some will laud the 35% of marketers who are investing in a seamless or integrated shopping experience, I for one would rather focus on the 65% who are not and in turn not giving the consumer what they want.
The statistics come courtesy of a survey conducted by The E-tailing Group Inc. Perhaps even more troubling is the fact the 35% of the respondents who say they expect to offer a seamless shopping experience plan to do so in 2014 or 2015. Doesn’t that in turn mean the 65% who DON’T plan on offering this to consumers will go at least until 2016 before even beginning to plan for it?...
The empowered customer is a common thread that has rocked—and continues to rock—all industries.
Whether you’re an established company or a thriving startup, here are 9 trends that have tipped the balance in favor of your customers.
Understand and apply Consumer Trend Canvas to any consumer trend. Today.
CONSUMER TREND CANVAS: An easy-to-follow framework that will help you not only unpack and understand any consumer trend, but also help you apply it to launch successful consumer-facing innovations of your own.
Consumer trends are, at their heart, an essential part of uncovering innovation opportunities. Otherwise they’re just intellectual masturbation: diverting, pleasant and entertaining, but with little real purpose ;)
Yet we frequently hear that ‘trends’ feel mysterious and opaque. Which is where the CONSUMER TREND CANVAS* comes in....
Five years ago, a team of researchers from Google announced a remarkable achievement in one of the world’s top scientific journals, Nature.
...It produces uncannily accurate results; that every single data point can be captured, making old statistical sampling techniques obsolete; that it is passé to fret about what causes what, because statistical correlation tells us what we need to know; and that scientific or statistical models aren’t needed because, to quote “The End of Theory”, a provocative essay published in Wired in 2008, “with enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.
Unfortunately, these four articles of faith are at best optimistic oversimplifications. At worst, according to David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge university, they can be “complete bollocks. Absolute nonsense.”
Found data underpin the new internet economy as companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon seek new ways to understand our lives through our data exhaust. Since Edward Snowden’s leaks about the scale and scope of US electronic surveillance it has become apparent that security services are just as fascinated with what they might learn from our data exhaust, too....
Even before you entered into the world of “business”, you were watching your competition. Whether it was in a classroom or on a sports team, you not only wanted to keep up, you wanted to know where the marker was set so you could go one step further. It was about finding new opportunities and setting new goals based on someone you aspired to beat.
At this time, when search is so important and detailed, and the Internet has grown so extensively, you have tons of different factors to consider when spying on your competition. This is where marketing tools come into play.In many cases, tools that help you monitor your own web performance also can help you gather data on your competition. So, you might be using some of these tools already, without using the features that help you evaluate your competitors. Here are some of the best tools out there...
In 2007, 10,000 people around the globe were asked about portable digital devices. It was part of a study conducted by the global media company Universal McCannMcCann.
...There’s a growing feeling that something is not working with market research, where billions are spent every year but results are mixed at best. Some of the problems relate to the basic challenge of using research to predict what consumers will want (especially with respect to products that are radically different). But marketers face one additional key problem: Study participants typically indicate preferences without first checking other information sources—yet this is very different from the way people shop for many products today.
In the Universal McCann study, for example, people were asked how much they agree with the statement, “I like the idea of having one portable device to fulfill all my needs.” Indeed, there was a significant difference between the percentage of people who completely agreed with this statement in Mexico (79%) and in the United States (31%). So, in theory, people in the United States were much less excited about a phone that’s also a camera and a music player.
But it was a different story when people got closer to making a decision. They heard about the iPhone in the media, where it was declared a revolutionary device, and read blogs and reviews from real users. As iPhones started rolling into the marketplace, the idea of “having one portable device to fulfill all my needs” was replaced by actual reports from users....
No one is arguing with statistics pointing to the fact that ecommerce will one day overtake other forms of shopping. The growth pace is just too staggering to think differently.An infographic put together by Gift-Library.com highlights statistics about how the trend is moving, citing how global ecommerce retail sales will reach $1,321.4 trillion by 2016. This number is a 67% increase from 2011...
So you're ready to take on the next game-changing business to business (B2B) marketing analytics project… maybe setting up some marketing tests, perhaps testing a predictive response?...
Accurately tracking customers is critically important to the operations of Sales, Marketing, and Services. However, the business can realize much more value if customer data is linked across the company, helping you to really understand your business by enabling… - Tracking of new customers, to understand where the business is growing - Cross-selling opportunities - Customer models and segmentation - Unambiguous marketing lead lists that tie to sales responsibilities - Predictive models that prioritize customers for upgrades and renewals - Customer lifetime value analysis calculations...
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Very interesting look at pricing and profits.