Consumers

Robert Scoble noise on Friendfeed - I embrace it. — I wanted to start off this blog post talking about “noise” on friendfeed. What is noise you ask? The noise level is all relevant to the amount of people you subscribe to. A good example is Robert Scoble. While at first I did not subscribe to him (nothing personal), I do now. Scoble probably has the biggest follower base on Friendfeed. Fear of noise is why i did not subscribe. After following him for 2 weeks on Friendfeed, my opinion is just the opposite. His stream is full of valuable nuggets of information. Most of his followers are smart... [Tags: carpenter, consumers, discoverer, fear, follower]

Display Advertising Works, But It Works Differently Than Search — There's been a lot of talk recently that search and other forms of "performance" or "direct" online marketing will continue to grow in the downturn while display and other forms of "brand" marketing will struggle. I think that's likely to be true at some level but it doesn't mean that display advertising doesn't work. In fact, a recent comScore white paper that was presented last week at the Empirical Generalizations In Advertising Conference at the Wharton School is very enlightening. You can get a copy of the white paper by asking for it here. comScore operates a panel of over... [Tags: advertiser, advertising conference, advertising works, banner ad campaigns, consumers]

New Credit Card Rules Have Banks, Consumers Bracing — The U.S. credit card industry, harshly criticized for imposing surprise fees and interest rate hikes on consumers, may face a day of reckoning on Thursday. The Federal Reserve is to vote on credit card reforms that may bring some relief to customers who face a variety of ways for being hit with late fees, universal defaults, shorter payment periods and confusing payment allocations for different balances.... [Tags: allocations, banks, consumers, credit card industry, day of reckoning]

Consumers don't trust corp. blogs — When it comes to gaining consumer confidence, company blogs are the used car salesmen of the media world. According to a new Forrester Research report, only 16% of people surveyed say they trust corporate blogs. That makes them the lowest-rated source of reliable information among 18 categories Forrester asked about including Web portals, print newspapers, radio and personal blogs...... [Tags: blogs, car salesmen, consumer confidence, consumers, forrester research]

Consumers have to wait for Web-based office — Microsoft has started limited internal testing of the browser-based versions of Excel, PowerPoint and Word but the rest of us will have to wait until 2009.... [Tags: consumers, microsoft, office microsoft, web based office]

Hate Vista? Dell Now Charging $150 Extra for Windows XP (MSFT) — We know that many consumers just don't like Windows Vista. But just how much more will people pay for a copy of the now nominally off-the-market Windows XP? More and more. In June, Dell (DELL) started charging customers an extra $20 to $50 for a downgrade to Windows XP. By October, Dell's XP premium was up to $100. We checked in on Dell's site today, and the retailer is now charging a whopping $150 for what Microsoft (MSFT) says is outdated software. Dell has been searching for profit anywhere it can get it. Likely the computer retailer will try to... [Tags: bonus, computer retailer, consumers, installed microsoft, market windows]

Top ten tips for brand engagement via social media — Brands seeking to engage their consumers via social media seem to be misunderstanding the whole concept of social media itself. It's for the people, by the people and business needs to recognise this. The consumer now has the power, and consumers in numbers can carry a lot of influence. The main article covers five misconceptions that brands appear to have around the area, such as ROI expectations and the risks associated with getting involved. I've also offered ten tips for those businesses wishing to engage with their target market through social media, which I hope are useful. If you're an organisation that is chosing to ignore the... [Tags: consumers, media brands, misconceptions, phenomenon, target market]

Email marketing best way to engage with consumers — Nearly 70 per cent of companies use email marketing as the most powerful way to engage with their customers, according to a new report.... [Tags: consumers, marketing]

More shoppers bought online Monday but spent less (AP) — AP - Online spending at U.S. retailers on Monday jumped 15 percent over with the comparable day a year ago to $846 million, comScore said Thursday, as consumers sought out bargains in a tough economy.... [Tags: bargains, comscore, consumers, economy, shoppers]

WSJ Editor Thomson: Buy Print Ads...Because Readers Just Ignore The Online Ones — Is there hope for newspapers after all? The Wall Street Journal's Managing Editor Robert Thomson says "yes." Why? Because advertisers who tried the Internet are returning to the safety of dead trees: Reuters: [Advertisers] are seeking to spend money in ways that are proven by decades of experience, said Thomson. "People are looking for a safe harbor in times of turbulence." Thomson believes that advertisers are starting to understand that consumers often ignore ads in other media because they are doing other things at the same time that sap their attention.With papers, the ads may be more valuable because they... [Tags: advertisers, consumers, cup of coffee, dead trees, decades]

iMazon.Com? New App Lets You Shop From Your iPhone — Hot on the heels of Target's holiday-shopping app (see elsewhere), Amazon.com released a free iPhone app to aid spending your money at the online shopping giant.The free app allows iPhone or iPod Touch owners to browse through all the products offered by Amazon, as well as by third-party retailers like Target and Macy’s that make their products available online through Amazon.The app also includes a nifty (and in Amazon's own words, "experimental") feature called Amazon Remembers.  Users can snap a photo of any object they'd like to buy and send it to the freelance workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program,... [Tags: amazon, consumers, experimental feature, free iphone, freelance workers]

A Sub-$100 Quasi-Netbook: The Coby PoqetMate Coming in March — Retailer Coby is gearing up to release a sorta, kinda, Netbook, that they don’t want to call a Netbook, but will be called the PoqetMate. Not only is the 7 incher (there’s also a 9 inch model in the works) a small device with a full QWERTY keyboard, but Coby is looking at a sub $100 price for the tiny device that they want to call a Midget PC. Saying the Midget PC will be smaller than Netbooks but not that much, Coby is also supposedly working on handhelds that will fold up like a hankerchief and fit in your... [Tags: coby, consumers, engadget, full qwerty keyboard, grocery chains]

Happy Holidays? Economy Goes From Bad to Worse — If anyone needed more evidence of consumers' weary state and the nation's deteriorating job market, they got it Thursday with the latest batch of bleak economic data.Stocks Face Rough Month Where the Layoffs Are... [Tags: consumers, economic data, economy, happy holidays, job]

AT&T forms co-branding partnership with ChaCha — AT&T announced Wednesday that it has formed a strategic partnership with ChaCha, a mobile service that allows users to submit questions via text message or phone and receive their answer in a text message. The deal calls for a co-branded greeting and AT&T promotion when consumers call ChaCha's answer hotline or text message the company a question. More important from a business standpoint, the two companies will also work together to improve ChaCha's mobile-answers service and develop both text and voice ad-based services. The partnership between AT&T and ChaCha is interesting, to say the least. At first glance, the... [Tags: accuracy, advertising solution, amp, answer hotline, business standpoint]

Online auctions remain piracy problem for Microsoft — The company has filed another 63 suits against pirates selling via online marketplaces, the fact is, consumers remain eager to find cut-rate offers for Windows and Office.... [Tags: consumers, microsoft, online auctions, online marketplaces, piracy]

Online Christmas retail is far from freezing this year — Any notion that Christmas will be cancelled this year has been greatly exaggerated, according to the 14th Annual Christmas Retail Survey from Deloitte. The global auditor and advisory firm reports that for most of the UK population, the economic downturn will not be getting in the way of Christmas, with 57% of  consumers saying that they plan to spend the same amounts as they did last year.... [Tags: christmas, consumers, deloitte, economic downturn, notion]

Retailers rejoice: Cyber Monday sales figures rise — Online shoppers spend 15% more than a year ago, but merchants may have had to slash their profit margins to get them to buy. Wooed by heavy discounts from online retailers, consumers who had been exercising restraint during this holiday shopping season finally let themselves go on Cyber Monday.... [Tags: consumers, cyber monday sales, holiday shopping, merchants, online retailers]