Archive for July 7th, 2008
Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, Sony Corp ADR (SNE)
Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rainbows has enjoyed critical and commercial success since it was released last October through a one-of-a-kind “pay-what-you-want” scheme directly from the band and its management team. Likewise, many fellow artists have come out in favor of the scheme or against the method used by the English band. Fellow English band Oasis, however, has absolutely dismissed any notion that the band will ever duplicate that method, citing expenses incurred during the recording of new album Dig Out Your Soul over the course of the past year.
A new report by Gigwise reveals the band’s position and reasons for it, with Oasis calling the Radiohead method nothing more than a marketing tool. Noel Gallagher, Oasis’ lead songwriter and guitarist, did call Radiohead “rebels and outsiders” when commending Radiohead’s method as a one-of-a-kind marketing tool.
Oasis signed a new deal with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture between Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) and Germany’s Bertelsmann Music Group, last month that will see the band’s own label, Massive Brother Recordings, release the new album while Sony BMG oversees the band’s back catalog and previous releases. The deal is a more traditional arrangement in today’s market and environment that makes the new comments against Radiohead unsurprising.
But statements from Noel Gallager like “I didn’t spend a year in the most expensive studio in England, with the most pricey producer in America, and the most costly graphic designer in London to then give it away…” indicate that the band has a bloated view of their place and presence compared to Radiohead. In Rainbows received critical praise and commercial success, but no Oasis album has encountered similar critical praise in years. The band’s singles and albums have enjoyed great commercial success, which might indicate why Gallagher and company feel the way they do.
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Filed under: Products and services, Dell (DELL)
 When Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) released its latest Inspiron and Studio laptop Computers over the last year, the colorful lidbacks it made available were a great idea to entice consumers fatigued of the same-old boring black and charcoal laptop Personal computer designs. Dell’s idea wasn’t anything new really — Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has had this idea for years with its iPod music players and practically invented the idea with the original iMac design (one personal - many colors). The trick for Dell was allowing all these color choices while at the same time trying to enter retail at a furious pace. How can a retail store stock all those different colors and ensure they all sell? That’s a conundrum.
While Dell still sells its Inspiron and Studio computers direct from its website, I’ve found that the prices generally can’t match what a retailer would be offering. Take any regular Sunday newspaper ad and you’ll see it — low, low prices on many entry-level laptop PCs from all the major Personal computer makers — and Dell is right there with them. Competition does bring prices down for the consumer. The problem with Dell is that it can’t keep all those lid colors in stock at any retailer without the possibility of a few colors not selling as well and the retailer asking for credit due to clearance sales or anything else it has to do to move out older, non-moving product from shelves.
Dell’s IdeaStorm consumer feedback website is really a neat model for taking suggestions from its customer base. After reading this consumer thread, I have to wonder — why can’t Dell design its consumer laptops that accept the capability of “snap-on” color lid covers? Perhaps even keyboard-surround color changes as well? These molded plastic parts would be very cheap to have made, and offering them for free for three months would be the best (and cheapest) PR to get consumers used to the idea that they could instantly transform that new Dell laptop into a color of their choice within a few seconds. This concept worked incredibly well with the cellphone — why not the laptop Personal computer?
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Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Apple Inc (AAPL), Marketing and advertising
 7digital.com, a British-based digital music retailer, reported to Billboard Monday that the store has seen a 300% increase in sales of MP3 tracks during the first half of 2008. The report is attributed to the availability of MP3 tracks without anti-piracy technology from Warner Music Group Corp. (NYSE: WMG) and British music company EMI Group. EMI also enjoys two of the three best-selling albums in the store: Coldplay’s Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Kylie Minogue’s X. If EMI hadn’t lost Radiohead last year, the company would have all three with the band’s In Rainbows.
Ben Drury, 7digital.com’s CEO, commented on the place of the newer, higher quality, DRM-free tracks in the digital market, calling them “the future for digital music” and a sign that all on the internet music sales will be handled in the format. In the meantime, 7digital.com has become the number two digital music retailer in the United Kingdom, entertaining nearly two million consumers every month. Although it is a UK-based company, American consumers can use the site and enjoy high-quality DRM-free MP3 tracks via a credit card and a currency conversion charge.
I’ve utilized 7digital.com in the past for the very reasons that the company is now reporting increased sales, even though the conversion charge and prices are not easy to determine due to the lower value of the dollar compared to the pound. The digital market deserves to be less about borders than it is and 7digital.com proves that DRM-free and internationalization can co-exist even with extra fees and charges for American users. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)’s iTunes Store is another digital retailer that could benefit from these types of sales, but the company maintains different stores for national markets.
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Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Microsoft (MSFT), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI)
 When Ask.com’s mapping service was just getting up to speed as a very workable product, the company decided to jettison its in-house mapping service and instead install Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) own mapping service. Ask.com company parent InterActive Corp. (NASDAQ: IACI) apparently decided to cut some costs in the day and age of hyper-competition with Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft and just outsource a great product that was taking up too many resources with too tiny to show for it.
Microsoft’s Virtual Earth technology is now powering Ask.com mapping service. It should not be seen as defeat for Ask.com, as Microsoft’s offering is superior in nearly each way from my experience (and most likely, cheaper to license instead of maintaining an in-house product). This brings up an important question: is Ask.com in cost-cutting mode temporarily or permanently? The search engine and portal has seen its global market share sit pretty idle for the last year, as has Microsoft. Google, meanwhile, has slightly increased its search marketshare, Let’s face it — Ask.com, like those others, makes it’s money in search (with smaller peripheral income sources of course).
Where is Ask.com’s future revenue going to come from? Search advertising? Shopping commissions? All of the above? If Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is possibly going to outsource its search to Google, what is stopping Ask.com from using Google’s technology as well? That would literally pit Microsoft and Google as bulls racing towards each other. But if Ask.com is fretting over the continuance of its mapping product, search can’t be that far behind. Then, the Ask.com brand will be the only thing left.
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Filed under: International markets, Products and services, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Ford Motor (F), Oil
 With gasoline prices sitting at record highs, and the auto industry struggling to deal with the situation, there is a new shift in the design of cars. Historically, when you purchased a smaller engine car, that engine came in a vehicle that had far less in the way of comfort and amenities… well, that is changing.
Think back a few years. You went to your local auto lot to pick up a new car, and your first choice was what size engine you wanted, the heavy duty 8-cylinder, 6, or 4-cylinder vehicle? Suppose you decided the 8-cylinder was for you, can you picture the car that supported this engine? Typically these cars had all the bells and whistles you could imagine: the sunroof, the leather seating, fancy radios, power windows, etc. Basically, the larger the engine, the better the “packaging” that it came along with.
Now, picture the 4-cylinder vehicle from the past. Not much to picture here. Power windows? Doubtful. Yes, the 4-cylinder cars of the past were typically your bare bones car with few fewer amenities than those coming with the 8-cylinder alternatives. If you were lucky, you would at least get some power steering in the vehicle, but that was not always the case either.
Well, times are changing. And American consumers want those 4-cylinder cars now, but they do not want to give up on all the extra features that they have become accustomed to having. Auto makers are feeling this shift in consumer demand and have started to look at ways to get the smaller engines into more consumer friendly vehicles.
The data does not lie, and if you look at models that have done well in the first half of the year, you’ll see exactly what we’re speaking about. Consider the Civic by Honda Motors (NYSE: HMC) and the Fusion by Ford Motor (NYSE: F). Both of these models offer the smaller engines in the decked out vehicles, and not surprisingly, both did very well during the tough first six months of this year. The Civic had sales increase by 17.9%, and the Fusion’s sales were up 11.7%.
So, it goes to show that auto buyers are out there. They are looking to buy new vehicles, but the automakers just have to comprehend that the typical American has realized that they days of cheap gas might be gone forever. Europe has dealt with high gas prices for years, and yet its auto industry isn’t suffering… why? Because European carmakers are offering their consumers exactly what they want — fuel efficient vehicles that come with all the bells and whistles.
Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.
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ScienceDaily is reporting that Japanese chemists have created the world’s first DNA molecule comprised of nearly entirely artificial components. The breakthrough could lead to advances in both medicine and technology, possibly utilizing the massive storage capacity of DNA. “In the new study, Masahiko Inouye and colleagues point out that scientists have tried for years to develop artificial versions of DNA in order to extend its breathtaking information storage capabilities. As the genetic blueprint of all life forms, DNA uses the same set of four basic building blocks, known as bases, to code for a variety of proteins used in cell functioning and development. Until now, scientists have only been able to craft DNA molecules with one or a few artificial parts, including certain bases.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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ScienceDaily is reporting that Japanese chemists have created the world’s first DNA molecule comprised of nearly entirely artificial components. The breakthrough could lead to advances in both medicine and technology, possibly utilizing the big storage capacity of DNA. “In the new study, Masahiko Inouye and colleagues point out that scientists have tried for years to develop artificial versions of DNA in order to extend its astounding information storage abilities. As the genetic blueprint of all life forms, DNA uses the same set of four basic building blocks, known as bases, to code for a variety of proteins used in cell functioning and development. Until now, scientists have only been able to craft DNA molecules with one or a few artificial parts, including certain bases.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sportsqs writes “The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to start production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the ‘microwave audio effect’ to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people’s heads.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Posted by: admin in Today News
Newsflash: Jim Lampley Goes to the Same Strip Clubs as Money … - SportingNews.com
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Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Family Dollar Stores (FDO)
 Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE: FDO), along with the other dollar stores, might start to see many more non-traditional customers who are aching to save every penny in the face of increasing energy and food costs. The first strike at that concept was from Family Dollar, which reported a 7.1% increase in net income for its latest quarter.
While sales grew at Family Dollar, stores that target affluent or higher-income shoppers saw flat or negative growth. This all points to one thing: customers are seeking out bargains wherever they have the ability to to offset rising prices in other areas of their lives. This sounds enjoy it should have happened last summer as the credit freeze was beginning, but with summer in full swing and gas prices at $4 a gallon levels, the reality of the dollar store is setting in for millions of Americans.
With the typical Family Dollar customer being the “mom who makes less than $30,000 per year,” it’s not hard to envision all the dollar-type retailers starting to see increasing fortunes in the near future. Each worker in the U.S. who drives has easily seen their last performance increase fade away. In fact, many have actually experienced a big financial demotion due to high gas prices and food costs. It’s hard to think of it that way for many, but that is what it is. Inflation and energy costs can wipe out that raise pretty fast, yes? With that in mind, you may want to venture into a dollar store soon. Most likely, you’ll be pleased with the price levels you find on nearly each product.
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