I might be grandstanding on the shoulders of giants here, but it seems to me that there may be one very important thing missing from Kevin Kelly’s very good observation that things in the digital world attain value from being better than free.
Kevin’s list looks something like this – value is created with
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Immediacy
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Personalisation
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Interpretation
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Authenticity
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Accessibility
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Embodiment
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Patronage
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Findability
Seth Godin, also noticed that this was a profound observation and went on to recently make some profound observations of his own about how managing a tribe is much better than marketing a brand.
From this, it seems apparent that there is some “Better than Free” value to be had in “Belonging”. I think it is some sort of altruistic fulfilment we get from belonging to a tribe, contributing to a tribe, and then having that contribution valued, or recognised in some way. For some people this will be ego stroking, for others it will be the joy of giving.
As Denis Leary said,
“Folks, Id like to sing a song about the American Dream
About me, about you
About the way our American hearts beat way down in the bottom of our chests
About that special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts
Maybe below the cockles,
Maybe in the sub cockle area,
Maybe in the liver, maybe in the kidneys,
Maybe even in the colon, we don’t know”
The truth is, we don’t know where we get that feeling, but I’m lead to believe that we all get it from time to time, and it may even be called love – but, at risk of sounding like a boardroom marketer pushing some jargon, I’ll cover all my bases by calling it Altruistic Fulfilment under the broad heading of “Belonging”.
If there is one missing from Kevin’s list, I’m guessing we are likely to discover more as the web unfolds,
Another two valuable things under this heading could also be Significance/Influence which are obviously very valuable things.
Traditional retailers are reclaiming the ground lost to ‘e-tailers’ (online only retailers) over the past few years, with over 3.5 million unique visitors searching catalogues online for in-store offers over the December shopping period.
Bricks-and-mortar retailers reclaimed market share from e-tailers over the Christmas shopping period, with more than 3.5 million unique visitors searching the catalogues of retailers published on Salmat DigitalForce’s Lasoo.com.au and Dynamic Catalogue platforms during December.
The figure is an aggregated total of unique visitors throughout the month to Lasoo.com.au and the 20-plus Dynamic Catalogues hosted within the sites of individual retailers, including major brands such as Target, BIG W, Myer and Dick Smith.
Previous Christmas retail periods indicated a trend towards consumers engaging more with e-tailers’ at the expense of the bricks and mortar retail brands. This was largely attributable to the fact that time-poor consumers were easily able to find exactly what they were looking for on the internet from the online retailers, while traditional retailers struggled to make their brands and offers discoverable online.
Since the November 2007 launch of Lasoo.com.au, which allows consumers to search catalogues and offers from various retailers; and Dynamic Catalogue, a managed catalogue hosting solution that sits within the retailer’s own site; offline retailers have had an effective way of making their catalogue offers visible to consumers online. What’s more, the technology behind Lasoo.com.au and Dynamic Catalogue allows these offers to appear towards the top of search results from search engines such as Google. Until Lasoo and Dynamic Catalogue, these search results pages were previously dominated by e-tailers.
Pre-Shopping has become a growing trend for online shoppers seeking instant gratification, as witnessed by e-tailers with conversion rates around 1% to 4%. Retailers have capitalised on the behaviour in 2008, clocking up a 24% conversion rate from online–to-offline transactions.
Lasoo analysed Hitwise data by comparing a custom category of the Top 25 Retailers (traditional bricks and mortar retailers) against a custom category of top 25 E-tailers (pure online retailers) based on market share of Australian Internet visits. As a result the year-on-year comparison of the market share of traditional retailers v e-tailers[1] during Q4 clearly demonstrates this trend, with the retailer Christmas traffic surpassing the benchmark previously set by e-tailers as they now seem to have reached a ceiling over the last 2 years.
E-Tailers vs Retailers Q4 06
Etailer vs Retailer Q4 07
Etailer vs Retailer Q4 08
[1] Using custom categories (see endnote) comparing weekly visits against traffic in “All Categories”
E-tailer traffic included:
shop.lego.com www.1-day.com.au www.abebooks.com www.allposters.com.au www.altech.com.au www.amazon.com www.ap.dell.com www.apple.com.au/itunes www.avon.com.au www.bargaindeals.com.au www.bigpondmusic.com www.bodybuilding.com www.booktopia.com.au www.cafepress.com www.catchoftheday.com.au www.crazysales.com.au www.dailydeals.com.au www.deals2u.com.au www.dealsdirect.com.au www.dinosaurdeals.com.au www.dstore.com.au www.ezibuy.com.au www.ezydvd.com.au www.factoryfast.com.au www.fishpond.com.au www.graysonline.com.au www.hp.com www.isubscribe.com.au www.itvsn.com.au www.latestbuy.com.au www.lenovo.com www.liteneasy.com.au www.modyourcar.com.au www.moshtix.com.au www.mwave.com.au www.oo.com.au www.ozstock.com.au www.play-asia.com www.redbubble.com.au www.shoppersadvantage.com.au www.shoppingsquare.com.au www.simplymobile.com.au www.soldsmart.com.au www.strawberrynet.com www.streetsmartshopper.com.au www.techbuy.com.au www.ticketek.com.au www.ticketmaster.com.au www.topbuy.com.au www.wickedweasel.com.au www.winemakerschoice.com.au www.zazz.com.au www.zazzle.com.au www.zodee.com.au
Retailer Traffic included:
catalogues.bigw.com.au shop.telstra.com.au store.three.com.au store.vodafone.com.au www.abcshop.com.au www.aldi.com.au www.angusrobertson.com.au www.bcf.com.au www.bigw.com.au www.bigwentertainment.com.au www.binglee.com.au www.borders.com.au www.bunnings.com.au www.coles.com.au www.crazyjohns.com.au www.davidjones.com.au www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au www.digitalhome.com.au www.dse.com.au www.dymocks.com.au www.ebgames.com.au www.fantasticfurniture.com.au www.flightcentre.com.au www.freedom.com.au www.game.com.au www.harveynorman.com.au www.ikea.com www.jaycar.com.au www.jbhifi.com.au www.jbhifionline.com.au www.kmart.com.au www.loadit.com.au www.mitre10.com.au www.msy.com.au www.myer.com.au www.officeworks.com.au www.petersofkensington.com.au www.rebelsport.com.au www.retravision.com.au www.rivers.com.au www.sanity.com.au www.spotlight.com.au www.supercheapauto.com.au www.supre.au.com www.target.com.au www.target.dynamiccatalogue.com.au www.teds.com.au www.thegoodguys.com.au www.toysrus.com.au www.umart.com.au www.videoezy.com.au www.westfield.com.au www.witchery.com.au www.woolworths.com.au
This speech by Barry Schawrtz about our loss of wisdom and the importance of virtue emphasises a lot of what I ranted about in this extraordinarily long post (for those who were bold enough not to bounce).
It is nice to hear this espoused so elegantly.
Interestingly, with the advent of social media, it is becoming apparent that the rewards of virtue are becoming greater, as is authenticity.
As awareness continually increases about other people, and ourselves, the best parts of society are being magnified as social solutions put an end to our anti-social past. Corparations are learning this and are beginning to behave more like the “persons” that they are legally defined as. Oddly, people are beginning to behave more like corporations too…
