Ctrl-Shift - Understanding Consumer Empowerment

In our newsletter this month we have new research to tell you about. We also highlight our project looking at the Internet of Things market and round off with some key news, including some international developments.

Decisions Decisions    

We’ve published our briefing paper about the development of a revolutionary and disruptive industry for consumer decision-support services. These services empower consumers by helping them to make better decisions and change their own behaviours. The report explains why this revolution is happening now, what forms it’s taking, and what its impacts are: this is a new market that changes…

First came 'pure play' internet companies like Amazon and eBuy, then 'bricks and clicks' came along. Today, in retailing especially, online is about the only bright spot and for most customer facing companies 'multi-channel', face to face, phone, online, mobile, is now a must.

The challenges of multi-channel are well known. Customers increasingly expect to be able to jump seamlessly from one channel to another, but actually providing this seamless experience is a massive operational and data headache. Given the penalties for failing to achieve this (basically, loss of customers) and the contrasting upsides – a reputation for service plus…

Phew! It has taken us six months but we got there in the end. Today (27 January), in the lead up to Data Protection Day (28th January) we’ve published new research assessing the privacy policies of the UK’s top 100 online retailers – the sector where many consumers most commonly experience the benefits and pitfalls of e-commerce.

We don’t think anyone has ever done this before and now we’ve got to the end, we’re not surprised. The project kicked off in the summer of 2011 when we started to think through an objective assessment of the state of the nation…

So what trends will take shape in 2012 as the control shift continues in this era of consumer empowerment?

Consumers will continue to assert their ‘voice’ harnessing social media to organise themselves and share information. This level of active participation as people engage more vocally with organisations and each other is likely to grow and increase in momentum.

Using technology people will connect and collaborate in new ways causing disruption to established order. People’s shopping habits will continue the trend from ‘bricks’ to better-informed ‘clicks’. Consumers will be more active and demanding in their relationships with businesses; ‘I like this’ or…

We're now planning our next research reports and we'd like your input.

We're already committed to two reports (see below) and would like to choose two more from the options list. Feedback very welcome.

Privacy comparisons. Which of the top 100 e-commerce e-tailers has the best privacy policy and which has the worst?

Decision-making market. As a follow-on from our work on personal information management services (PIMS), we look at the broad scope of suppliers in this market and chart what benefits consumers get from making better decisions.

Options for early 2012 -

The Personal Data Store (PDS) market.…

Playing down good news isn’t something one expects from politicians these days, but there’s at least one real driver for growth buried in George Osborne’s Autumn Statement. In it he announced new Open Data measures, and this signals a battery of initiatives that will present new and exciting opportunities to outperform our decreased growth forecast. According to the Cabinet Office the measures will, ‘open up public sector data to make travel easier and healthcare better, and create significant growth for industry and jobs in the UK.’ More Open Data will ‘allow entrepreneurs to develop useful applications for business and consumers’.…

At our recent event ‘To hoard or to share: midata and the personal data-sharing revolution’ Alan Mitchell discussed the Government’s midata programme in the broader context of changes to the personal data landscape. We’ve now published a report on the New Personal Data Landscape that identifies these transformational trends, highlights the emerging market for new personal data management services and analyses the opportunities and threats for organisations.

For the last fifty years organisations have had a monopoly on the collection and use of customer data. But this is changing. Individuals are starting to collect and manage their…

We're now planning our Autumn research programme and are looking for input on the top three projects and some suggestions for what we should cover in early 2012.

October - PIMS 2 - the personal information management market

This report is about the market that changes markets - how third party vendors are helping consumers work across markets.

Building on Ctrl-Shift’s 2010 initial foray into this market, the report is focused on how services are being built to allow consumers to keep information about themselves in one easy to manage place. The report will include updates on Mint, MoneyStrands, Google…

Over the next few weeks I’m going to do a series of short blogs exploring a gear change in the way markets work, triggered by one aspect of the control shift: the unfolding consumer decision-making revolution.

The bottom line is this. For the last hundred years or so, commercial activities have been organised around identifying and meeting peoples’ consumption needs, via markets for products and services.

Now however, a new level of economic activity is emerging around another set of consumer needs: their decision-making needs – needs that, for the most part, have largely been ignored and which therefore remain…

Two years ago, McKinsey reported on a multi-category, multi country research project which showed that in the face of exploding product choices and digital channels, the increasing need for two way conversations with consumers and "the emergence of an increasingly discerning, well-informed consumer", marketing strategies that rely on "influencing customers by relying solely on one-way, push advertising" were losing traction.

They’ve just revisited this research and report that “this evolution has only accelerated” as consumers go online to social networks, blogs, review forums etc “to quench their thirst for objective advice about products”.

McKinsey draw one important…

The Ctrl-Shift Explorers' Club met on May 12 to share experiences and understanding of the changing consumer market place. It was an eclectic mix. Attendees included large corporations and small businesses; public and private sectors; different vertical markets; and suppliers of marketing services and the creators of some of the new tools available to consumers.

The event had plenty of time for discussion around a number of topics we've been researching including

The Government’s ‘mydata’ initiative - what the paper says, what the implications are, and what companies should do to take advantage of the hidden radicalism in this…

Attended an excellent event at Nesta this morning. Four great speakers all revealing how new services designed around the user are making real savings for the NHS and other parts of the NHS. The introductory remark was that if 1% of consultations could take place at home, this would save the NHS £250m a year. It's a huge saving and opportunity.

* Adil Abrar, founder and director, Sidekick Studios. Sidekick are behind the Buddy project, part of NESTA’s Reboot Britain programme looking at new solutions for public services, helping patients with anxiety and depression to track…

The Government’s new programme 'Better Choices: Better Deals' represents a significant acceleration in the trend towards consumer empowerment. They even call it a ‘Consumer Empowerment Strategy’. We’ve prepared a mydata briefing on what this means for organisations. It’s free!

The announcement is a first on two fronts:

1) Its ‘mydata’ programme encourages companies to release data they hold about individuals back to them, so that they can use this data for their own purposes. This is the first major Government initiative, globally, towards a changed personal data consensus: personal data is a personal asset, and individuals should have…

Today the Government launched its new Better Choices: Better Deals Consumer Empowerment strategy, of which Mydata is a key part.

Mydata is an initiative to encourage businesses to release data back to individuals in a portable re-usable way - so that the data becomes a useful resource for the individual as well as for the company.

This is a landmark move towards personal information empowerment.  Ctrl-Shift attended a special Roundtable at No 10 Downing Street as part of the consultations around this proposal. I was asked to give a short presentation. Here is what I said:
 

What does the phrase 'consumer empowerment' mean to you?

Depending who you are it may seem like a threat, or 'about time too'; or a 'trend' to be observed. Right now however, very few people see it as a business opportunity.

That needs to change, because empowering consumers is probably one of the biggest opportunities for innovation and growth we've seen for decades. We (Ctrl-Shift) have just published a report which begins to outline the scale of this opportunity.

Called 'Personal Information Management Services - A Market Poised to Disrupt', the report makes this simple observation: everyone wants to…

There are two sides to the control shift.

1) The first is organisations realising that the quest for control over customers is futile and counterproductive.

2) The second is actual shifts in control, due to (for example) changes in the way information is collected, managed and used.

This blog explores how the quest for control came about, and why it causes so many problems.

Aristotle said the natural state of matter is rest, so he had to explain motion: with the concept of the Prime Mover. Newton said the natural state of matter is motion, and explained rest in terms of friction. They both looked at exactly the same evidence and drew opposite conclusions.

I think we’ve got a similar problem in marketing metrics. Marketers have been on a long and fruitless wild goose chase – the quest for ‘evidence’ that they are changing consumer behaviour; for evidence of their role as the Prime Mover of markets. We can stay on this…