An infinite amount of hypothesizing and contemplating can be applied to the question: “What to do given the market is going to crap?” The number of hypotheses as to what exactly will happen and how this will affect our businesses is equally untenable.

The premise of my latest blog (posted to GigaOM.com - 4 Steps to Making Strategic Decisions in Today’s Market) is the need for businesses to take a more analytical approach to address the current environment. Essentially, the high degree of variance in economic perspectives does not preclude being thoughtful and analytical in reacting to the global-macro-economic environment.

http://gigaom.com/2008/11/16/4-steps-to-strategic-decision-making-in-today%E2%80%99s-market/

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment below or on GigaOM.

Online consumers are increasingly being bombarded with new sources of information, from Internet news outlets and email, to blogs, instant messages, podcasts, YouTube videos, text messages, and viral marketing campaigns.  Information now moves so quickly and freely that the buying patterns of entire populations can change in a matter of hours. That’s why online retailers need to “merchandise to the minute” by offering relevant, personalized product recommendations to each and every consumer in real time.

Relevant and timely recommendations don’t just generate incremental sales. They demonstrate to customers that a merchant moves at the same speed they do, staying up on … Continue Reading

Customers typically go through a series of lifecycle phases including prospect, acquisition, cross-sell, fading, churn (a.k.a. attrition), and reactivation (a.k.a. win-back).  In subscription-based products like cable TV and magazines, churn is well-defined: if the don’t renew then they churned.  With other products the lines are a broad spectrum of grays.  If a customer hasn’t used their mobile phone or credit card for three months, then they probably churned but just haven’t bothered telling your billing systems yet.  No use in 10 weeks, 9 weeks, 8 weeks… still likely gone.  What about no use yesterday?

In retail, every time a customer checks-out, … Continue Reading

Innovation in ecommerce is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Whereas the last sweep of tools and technologies available to etailers came nearly a decade ago and more or less simply facilitated getting products online, today’s entrepreneurs are delivering everything from ratings and review widgets to deep analytics to personalization. Welcome, everyone, to the next-generation of ecommerce.

We’ve created this forum for you to read about and respond to experts who are working with the cutting edge tools being deployed in the ecommerce space; industry insiders will share with you what they’re doing while expert outsiders will share what they’re seeing.  I’m … Continue Reading