What Should An Internet Retailer Do?

Online shopping in India has grown tremendously and in next few year it is going to grow exponentially. In the recent Gartner Report, Hype Cycle for Ecommerce,  “Ecommerce in India” is showing “At the Peak”. This gives us a clear indication that Indian markets are going to witness spiral growth in this segment. Many brick and mortar storefronts  went online and others are planning to. Since opening an online store is no more a challenge, the next generation entrepreneurs have come up with only  "brick and click" model. Thanks to Ecommerce technology platforms such as Martjack, Shopclues, Bulidabazaar ,Magento and many others who are providing SaaS based solutions that in effect reducing the overall cost for an Internet Retailer.  

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Funded Online Retail Companies in India

Indian online retailers are seeing a spiral growth in their business. It is because of people started buying products over online and it is becoming habit as there is no need to stand in a queue, walk on corridor and get tired while driving. Browse over internet and get your product delivered at your doorstep with discounts and peace of mind through cash on delivery, try and buy , 100 days return policy no question asked etc.

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Interview: Founder of Positiveluxury.com

Diana Verde Nieto founded Clownfish in 2002 – a pioneering global sustainability consultancy which she sold to Aegis Media in 2008. Born in Argentina, she has lived in Brazil,  New York, Singapore and China, but is now based in London. In 2011 Diana founded Positive Luxury, the  UK’S first online Consumer Guide  to Living Positively. The site bridges the gap between CSR and marketing by giving consumers access to brand’s social  and  environmental actions in a  simple,  jargon-­‐  free language at  click.  She has helped Unilever, Coca-­‐Cola and Nike amongst other clients with their Sustainability programs and was trained by Al Gore at the Alliance of Climate protection. Picked for the World  Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader  program in  2011,  she’s studied  at the Harvard   Kennedy  School on  Global Leadership  & Public  Policy,  sits  on  the  advisory  board  for  the YGL/World Economic  Forum  community and   is  a  member  of  the  Global  Agenda  Council  for  Sustainable Consumption. To know more about Positive Luxury we had a talk with Diana.

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OpenAXIS's Distribution 2.0 Platform For Airlines

Earlier, airlines sold their products directly to customers. No big deal, then. It was easy. Then, evolved the GDS (Global Distribution System). The complexities evolved too. Next, various other distribution channels like OTAs, Meta-Search engines, Web Services and many other travel intermediaries evolved. All these are "non-direct-channels" or "indirect channels". While the indirect channel solved a lot of problem for airlines, it also brought a great level of complexity and challenge in managing it.

What is the complexity and challenge in non-direct channels? It's another channel for airline to market and sell its products, right? So, its a revenue generating channel? Agreed its a revenue generating channel. But, let us describe in detail the disadvantage of all these indirect channels and how it affects the airlines/customers directly

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Airlines Leverage Social Media Innovatively

"We are happy that we got our brand presence in Social media" - this is so old. Yes, it is. Social media is much more than just establishing mere presence. It is a revenue generating channel for many airlines, a medium that has helped the PR team at airline companies to cut down costs, a medium in which airlines roll-out innovative programs / campaigns, a medium that airlines use it for managing their internal PTOs (JetBlue does it), a medium that's perceived by airline marketing team as THE most successful.


There is no hard and fast rule on how to use social media for betterment of the company, its upto the airline to put on their creativity cap to lure people (and convert them, retain them)

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15 Ways Travel Companies Use Social Media

Social media is emerging as a revenue generating platform, that's undeniable. The famous jargon "f-Commerce" is a great proof. By 2016, half of the travel industry will be using social media as a way of generating revenue and bookings. "Currently more than one-fifth (22 percent) use social media as a revenue generating tool with a further 27 percent planning to do so over the next five years" - says Robert Raunch in "Top 10 hospitality industry trends for 2012". Last week, we described how airlines are innovatively using social media to increase their revenue, establish a personal connect with customers and improve customer satisfaction.

Lets discuss 15 ways in which travel companies (airliner, hotelier, cruise line, rail, bus, car, travel intermediary) use social media in their day to day operation.

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Facebook Offers - Are They Really Serving The Purpose?

In May 2012, Facebook rolled out a feature called "Facebook Offers". This is much enhanced version of their earlier feature called "Facebook Deals" (that was scrapped in December'11). Let's discuss how Facebook Offers has influenced travel industry. "Travellers referred to a hotel or tourism booking site by Facebook are more likely to book travel than those who are referred via search engines like Google" - PhoCusWright Travel Research.

A research also says that 92% of consumers around the world trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

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Google Buys Frommers, Another Travel Company Acquisition

Google buys destination specialist Frommers for an undisclosed amount. What Google is going to do with Frommers is still unclear. Is Google planning to shutdown Frommers like what Facebook did with Gowalla in 2011? Answer is clearly NO. Google is well known for acquiring a product and seamlessly integrating it with their existing products. Once such instance is the smooth integration of Panoramio (acquired in 2007) in their Google Maps and Google Earth products.

Having said that, there is also an instance where Google acquired a product - "Ruba" (a visual travel site and a community with focus on guides, photos, maps and interactive tour listings) in 2010 only for their strong team and not for the product. This Frommers acquisition by Google has triggered lot of speculations on many areas.

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All New Google Travel Ecosystem

Five years ago, when someone asked "What's Google famous for?", the answer would have been unanimously - "their lightning search". Now in 2012, when someone asks the same question, there is no single answer. Google has branched out from being a mere search engine. Google's expansion is needed and its for good. Google has been acquiring many products in the recent past and integrating it with its suite of existing products. 
One industry that Google is clearly keeping close to its heart is - Travel. With its earlier acquisitions - Zagat, Panoramio and ITA Software, it triggered series of thoughts among the industry experts about Google venturing into travel business. Now, with its recent Frommers acquisition, it's evident that Google is filling up empty slots in the end-to-end travel ecosystem.

We analysed all products of Google and short-listed the products that are relevant to travel industry. Then, we mapped the short-listed products to travel ecosystem and we ended up creating below diagram. Will this be called by Google as "Google Travel" basket? We have to wait and watch. 

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Google Search Tweaked For Good (With Knowledge Graph) - Travellers Are Going To Love

Last week, Google acquired destination specialist company 'Frommers'. In May 2012, Google launched theKnowledge Graph that has received great positive feedback. The graph encompasses more than 500 million objects and more than 3.5 billion facts and about relationships between these objects. With Knowledge Graph as the base, Google has made three solid changes to its Search. Clearly, Google is on a roll with respect to
travel industry. The nice tweaks they make to their products are always a welcome gift for users. All three changes have direct (positive) impact for travellers. Yes, there is a negative impact for a small sector of travel companies, we will discuss that later in the article. Here are the three changes that Google made in its Search product:

1. Super intelligent recommendation & Enhanced visual search result

a) Larry Page defines a search engine as "understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want". This is what Google is trying hard to achieve. Now, Google has associated context and semantic to the search queries. With the help of Knowledge Graph, Google will now be able to understand a search term "rio" as three different items - it can be the city in Brazil, it can be an animation movie, or it can also be the casino in Vegas. Refer screenshot below.

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Hospitality India Conclave 2012 - Part 1

Last week, we attended a hospitality industry event "Hospitality India Conclave 2012" in Mumbai. The event was organized by Confianza in association with Hospitech. It was a day long event attended by 160+ executives from leading hotels. Few titles of the attendees were - Head of IT, Sales Head, Purchase Head, Director, CEO, Marketing Head, Vice President. We will be publishing all discussions happened during the event in series of posts. We will pickup key discussion pointers from the event, do our own research, add pointers and publish posts (starting from this one).

In a panel discussion, there was a very interesting point made by Alan D'Mello, Associate Director, Marketing & Communication, Daman Hospitality. Alan said that design of a hotel is very important, because the most engaging thing in social media is 'picture'. Photos attract customers the most than anything else in social media.

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