Ged Carroll

Category: consumer behaviour | 消費者行為 | 소비자 행동

Consumer behaviour is central to my role as an account planner and about how I look at the world.

Being from an Irish household growing up in the North West of England, everything was alien. I felt that I was interloping observer who was eternally curious.

The same traits stand today, I just get paid for them. Consumer behaviour and its interactions with the environment and societal structures are fascinating to me.

The hive mind of Wikipedia defines it as

‘the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services.’

It is considered to consist of how the consumer’s emotions, attitudes and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, marketing and economics (especially behavioural economics or nudge theory as its often known).

I tend to store a mix of third party insights and links to research papers here. If you were to read one thing on this blog about consumer behaviour, I would recommend this post I wrote on generations. This points out different ways that consumer behaviour can be misattributed, missed or misinterpreted.

Often the devil is in the context, which goes back to the wide ranging nature of this blog hinted at by the ‘renaissance’ in renaissance chambara. Back then I knew that I needed to have wide interests but hadn’t worked on defining the ‘why’ of having spread such a wide net in terms of subject matter.

  • New Apple MacBook Pro

    I slept a few naps before pulling together these thoughts on the new Apple MacBook Pro. I have been a Mac user since it was the mark of eccentricity. I am writing this post on a 13″ MacBook Pro and have a house of other Macs and peripherals.

    Theatre
    Apple launched a new range of Apple MacBook Pro’s on October 27, 2016. This was a day after Microsoft’s reinvigoration of its Surface franchise.  Apple ignores timing and tries to plough its own furrow. But comparisons by journalists and market analysts are inevitable.

    Microsoft has done a very good job at presenting a device that owes its build quality to the schooling that Apple has given to the Shenzhen eco-system over the past two decades.

    The focus on touch computing feels like a step on a roadmap to Minority Report style computing interfaces.  Microsoft has finally mastered the showmanship of Apple at its best.

    Apple’s presentation trod a well-worn formula. Tim Cook acts as the ringmaster and provides a business update. Angela Ahrendts sits at a prominent place in the audience and appears on a few cut-in shots. Craig Federighi presented the first product setting a light self-depreciating humour with in-jokes that pull the Apple watchers through the fourth wall and draws them inside ‘Apple’. Eddy Cue plays a similar role for more content related products. In that respect they are interchangeable like pieces of Lego.

    Phil Schiller came in to do the heavy lifting on the product. While the design had some points of interest including TouchID and the touchpad the ports on the machine are a major issue.

    Given the Pro nature of the computer, Apple couldn’t completely hide behind ‘design’ like it has done with the MacBook. So Phil Schiller was given the job of doing the heavy lifting on the product introduction.

    There was the usual Jonny Ive voiceover video on how the product was made with identikit superlatives from previous launches. It could almost be done by a bot with the voice of Jonny Ive, rather than disturbing his creative process.

    It all felt like it was dialled in, there wasn’t the sense of occasion that Apple has managed in the past.

    User experience
    Many people have pointed out that Microsoft’s products looked more innovative and seemed to be actively courting the creatives that have been the core of Apple’s support. In reality much of it was smoke and mirrors. Yes Apple has lost some of the video market because its machines just aren’t powerful, in comparison to other workstations out there.

    The touch interface is more of a red herring. Ever since the HP-150 – touch hasn’t played that well with desktop computers because content creators don’t like to take their hands too far from the keyboard when work. It ruins the flow if you can touch type; or have muscle memory for your PhotoShop shortcuts.

    Apple didn’t invent the Surface Dial because it already had an equivalent made by Griffin Technology – the PowerMate. In fact the PowerMate had originally been available for Windows Vista and Linux as well, but for some reason the device software didn’t work well with Windows 7 & 8.

    I can see why Apple has gravitated towards the touchpad instead. But it needed to do a better job telling the story.

    Heat
    Regardless of the wrong headedness of Microsoft’s announcements, the company has managed to get much of the heat that Apple used to bring to announcements. By comparison Apple ploughed exactly the same furrow as it has done for the past few years – the products themselves where interchangeable.

    The design provided little enthusiasm amongst the creatives that I know, beyond agitation at the pointless port changes and inconvenience that conveyed.

    While these people aren’t going to move to Microsoft, the Surface announcements provided them with a compare and contrast experience which agitated the situation further.  To quote one friend

    Apple doesn’t know who it is. It doesn’t know its customers and it no longer understands professionals.

    Design
    Apple’s design of the MacBook Pro shows a good deal of myopia. Yes, Apple saved weight in the laptops; but that doesn’t mean that the consumer saves weight. The move to USB C only has had a huge impact. A raft of new dongles, SD card readers and adaptors required. If like me you present to external parties, you will have a Thunderbolt to VGA dongle.

    With the new laptop, you will need a new VGA dongle, and a new HDMI dongle. I have £2,000 of Thunderbolt displays that will need some way of connecting to Apple’s new USB C port. I replace my displays less often than my laptop. We have even earlier displays in the office.

    Every so often I transfer files on to a disk for clients with locked down IT systems. Their IT department don’t like file transfer services like WeTransfer or FTP. They don’t like shared drives from Google or Box. I will need a USB C to USB adaptor to make this happen. Even the encrypted USB thumb drive on my ‘real life’ key chain will require an adaptor!

    I will be swimming in a sea of extra cables and parts that will weigh more than the 1/2 pound that Apple managed to save. Thank you for nothing, Apple.  Where interfaces have changed before there was a strong industry argument. Apple hit the curve at the right time for standards such as USB and dispensing with optical drives.

    The move to USB C seems to be more about having a long thin slot instead of a slightly taller one. Getting rid of the MagSafe power connector has actually made the laptop less safe. MagSafe is a connector that is still superior to anything else on the market.  Apple has moved from an obsession with ‘form and function’ to ‘form over function’.

    The problem is one of Apple’s own making: it has obsessed about size zero design since Steve Jobs used to have a Motorola RAZR.

    Price versus Value
    So despite coming with a half pound less mass and a lot of inconvenience, the devices come in at $200 more expensive than their predecessors. It will be harder for Apple customers to upgrade to this device unless their current machine is at least five years old. I don’t think that this laptop will provide the injection in shipments that Apple believes it will.

    A quick word on displays
    Apple’s move away from external displays was an interesting one. There can’t be that much engineering difference between building the iMac and the Apple Display? Yet Apple seems to have abandoned the market. It gives some professionals a natural break point to review whether they should stay with Apple. Apple displays aren’t only a product line but a visible ambassador of Apple’s brand where you can see the sea of displays in agencies and know that they are an Apple shop. It is the classic ‘Carol Bartz’ school of technology product management. What do you think of the new Apple MacBook Pro?

    More information
    Initial thoughts on Windows 8 | renaissance chambara
    Size Zero Design | renaissance chambara
    Why I am sunsetting Yahoo! | renaissance chambara
    Apple just told the world it has no idea who the Mac is for – Charged Tech – Medium
    Apple (AAPL) removed MagSafe, its safest, smartest invention ever, from the new MacBook Pros — Quartz
    How Apple’s New MacBook Pros Compare To Microsoft’s New Surface Studio | Fast Company | Business + Innovation – a subtly cutting article on the new MacBook Pro
    New MacBook Pro touches at why computers still matter for Apple | CNet
    Apple’s new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need | TechCrunch

  • Democracy in Decline by Philip Kotler

    It was a curious experience for me to be reading Democracy in Decline. When I was in college Philip Kotler was a constant part of my life. His Principles of Marketing was a core text for my degree. It is a bit weird reading another book by Professor Kotler; especially one on such a dramatically different topic.
    Democracy in Decline
    In Democracy in Decline Kotler addresses what are commonly cited as weaknesses in the political system of the United States. He provides an easy to understand guide to the US political system.  Kotler then gets into what he identifies as the key points of failure in the American political system.

    1. Low voter literacy, turnout and engagement
    2. Shortage of highly qualified and visionary candidates
    3. Blind belief in American exceptionalism
    4. Growing public antipathy towards government
    5. Two-party gridlock preventing needed legislation
    6. Growing role of money in politics
    7. Gerrymandering empowering incumbents to get re-elected forever
    8. Caucuses and primaries leading candidates to adopt more extreme positions
    9. Continuous conflict between the President and Congress
    10. Continuous conflict between the federal and state governments
    11. The supreme court’s readiness to revise legislative actions
    12. The difficulty of passing new amendments
    13. The difficulty of developing a sound foreign policy
    14. Making government agencies more accountable

    Kotler’s viewpoint is unashamedly liberal and supportive of collegiate rivalry underpinned by compromise in politics. The White House he envisions is more like the Barlett administration in The West Wing or Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets rather than Hilary Clinton. The flaws he has identified are so big in scale that they would likely require a major re-engineering of American society. From the electoral system, the relationship between federal and state government, public policy and public service.

    That kind of re-engineering would require widespread societal approval. That wouldn’t happen in the riven, polarised society of America today. The books measures would be completely against the interests of the conservative movement.

    For the European reader, Kotler offers an interesting engaged analysis of the American condition, however there is little to no reflection on the commonalities of national populism in European politics. This book will only provide an understanding of the United States; and that’s ok.

    Kotler has a sub-header in the tile of the book ‘Rebuilding the future‘. In reality Kotler provides an effective diagnosis, but an not anything that points to an effective solution beyond hoping for the best.

  • Toothbrush test + more news

    Toothbrush test

    Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm After it Failed the ‘Toothbrush Test’ – Bloomberg – executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc. nixed the plan because it failed Chief Executive Officer Larry Page’s “toothbrush test,” a requirement that the company only ship products used daily by billions of people, according to people familiar with the situation. – Surely this would nix Google‘s enterprise products as well? The toothbrush test poses a serious problem to Alphabet. The business can no longer go after most business opportunities, due to the tyranny of large numbers involved in their earnings. Secondly, they may not get lucky twice, the only benefit of the toothbrush test is preventing the kind of problem that Yahoo! had with the Broadcast.com acquisition. The toothbrush test sounds like an innovation killer

    Consumer behaviour

    More millennials switch off social media | FT – qualitative rather than quantitative data

    Economics

    Pound sterling could be worth less than a dollar within three years, investor Jim Rogers warns | The Independent – You’ve got a lot of debt, you’ve got a serious balance of trade problem which shows no signs of being corrected. I don’t see anything to make sterling go up – not terribly surprising conclusion. The only alternative would be massive cuts outside the South East including rural subsidies and infrastructure spending. The state pension would likely have to be means tested and cut. It would also make sense to up taxation on capital gains and death duty

    Marketing

    One on One – Edelman – Six of the top 10 PR firms did not grow or went backwards in 2015. This should be PR’s time, given the complexity of the environment (nationalism, populism, fear of pace of innovation) and the explosion of media options… I contended that the management of PR agencies has not sufficiently recognized the opportunity on the marketing side of the business. The emphasis on continued increase in profit margins has pushed our sector toward public affairs, crisis management and corporate reputation… – in addition PR is letting its top talent walk out the door, pay is below par for other disciplines and needs to get general managers that won’t have a rotating door on the new types of talent that they want to get in

    Media

    The Man Who Stood Up To Facebook : All Tech Considered : NPR – which all goes back to where Facebook deviated from the web 2.0 credo and used it to its own advantage – for instance hollowing out Yahoo!’s user base

    Tag Heuer’s adventure seeking leads to a Red Bull TV sponsorship | Luxury Daily – interesting wrinkle on brand content where other brands come in and sponsor the brand content

    Some Thoughts on Reuters, NY Times, and Yahoo – Lawfare  – Benjamin Wittes flags that much of the Yahoo story is unclear, including legal arguments and the objective of the search, and further reporting from Motherboard and the Intercept

    Online

    Analysis: Trump ‘rigged’ vote claim may leave lasting damage | AP News – I don’t think that you can pin this solely on Trump when you have thinkers like marketing professor Philip Kotler has written a book on how the current framework is broken to ‘repair’ US democracy.

    The Latest Celebrity Diet? Cyberbullying – The New York Times – which is going to legitimise the tactics in the minds of many people out there as ‘normal behaviour’

    Bronte Capital: Measuring how bad Twitter is – needs to fire two thirds of its staff

    Security

    What Surveillance Will Look Like in the Future – The Atlantic – of course this depends on not having Note 7-esque battery problems

    Europe to Push New Security Rules Amid IoT Mess — Krebs on Security – it is the right thing to do, but will be hard to police and won’t stop shoddy security on products coming out of the Shenzhen, Dongguan, Goungzhou silicon triangle in the Pearl River delta

    Software

    The Telegraph overhauls mobile app to focus on speed – Digiday – interesting focus on immediacy, goes against the ‘abundance of bandwidth’ assumption many developers use

    WTF is a container? | TechCrunch – really nice primer

    Huawei has formed a strategic partnership to develop AI – Business Insider – but could you trust it? Interesting that this hasn’t caused upset in the US body politic

    Daring Fireball: Walt Mossberg: ‘Why Does Siri Seem So Dumb?’ – John Gruber’s take is really good. I won’t even get into the fact that Siri just doesn’t understand my BBC northern English accent and so I just don’t bother using it

    Baidu Launches A Medical Chatbot That Acts As A Physician’s Assistant | IPG Media Lab – interesting application, IBM Watson has aspired to go in this direction. Maximises the 8 minutes a patient has in a doctors surgery

    Web of no web

    Most Drivers Who Own Cars With Built-in GPS Systems Use Phones For Directions – Mostly Out of Frustration – explains why TomTom and Garmin are still going

    Building a Smart Home With Apple’s HomeKit | Wirecutter – shows how immature the smart house still is. That is if you’re not concerned about your IoS (internet of shit) devices being compromised and turned into a bot net for hire

    Wireless

    Verizon just raised a big warning flag for Yahoo – The Washington Post – hacks had a material effect on the business

    The exploding Note 7 is no surprise – leaked Samsung doc highlights toxic internal culture • The Register – the Note 7 seems to have shone a light on the Samsung business

    iPhone 7 vs Leica M9-P: A Side-by-Side Photo Comparison | PetaPixel – to me these show the limits of the smartphone rather than how great it is

  • Brexit segmentation

    Inspiration for brexit segmentation

    This chain of thought on Brexit segmentation got fired up when my Facebook filled up with calls to petition British Airways to stop the distribution of the Daily Mail, mainly because of headlines like:
    mail headline
    So can a brexit segmentation be used as part of a marketing strategy? There are at least 16 million consumers that would broadly fit within the brexiter segment. When one looks at the demographic split of leave versus remain voters you start to see clear segmentation ideal for marketing opportunity.

    You already have brands doing this in the U.S. for instance standing up for LGBT rights. Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s have come out in support of Black Lives Matter.

    Now lets look at research done into the demographics of the voters.

    Much has been made of the splits in UK society:

    Young people who voted tended toward Remain; the older you were the more likely you would be a Brexiter

    (73%) of 18 to 24 year-olds voted to remain…

    A majority of those aged over 45 voted to leave, rising to 60% of those aged 65 or over

    Working class areas outside London and other major cities voted to leave

    The AB social group (broadly speaking, professionals and managers) were the only social group among whom a majority voted to remain (57%). C1s divided fairly evenly; nearly two thirds of C2DEs (64%) voted to leave the EU

    Labour claimed that a majority of Labour supporters who voted voted remain

    Nearly two thirds of Labour and SNP voters (63% and 64%), seven in ten Liberal Democrats and three quarters of Greens, voted to remain

    The correlation between class and voting broke down in Scotland and Northern Ireland were working class areas outside major cities narrowly voted to stay.

    Some of it was certainly a protest vote, large swathes of the country feel that they have been ignored by a professional city-orientated political class. As the Political Economy Research Centre reflected:

    The geography of leave voters reflected the economic crisis of the 1970s, not the 2010s.

    Concerns about financial future and family’s well being were stressors rather than root causes. Research attributed it to more deep seated attitudes that shaped world view.

    Work by the London School of Economics showed that when  attitudes were mapped against income level; working class status wasn’t as much a deciding factor as pollsters would have had one believe, instead it seemed to correlate close to personality traits.

    Closedness and openess

    Back in the 1950s American academics sought to answer the question of how Hitler and Mussolini  could have become so popular in what were initially democratic societies? What they and subsequent research found was that a certain amount of  a given population tend to have more of a closedness (or authoritarian dynamic) in their world view.

    This can be amplified through:

    • Culture
    • Fear
    • Change
    • Economic insecurity

    They look for strong leaders and simple answers. Nostalgia and the past is reassuring. They are less interested in ‘sensation seeking’ and want to fit in.

    Liberal values tended to be more orientated towards aspects of openness that embrace newness, sensations, innovation and change.

    The Google Trends spike

    Much was made of a post-election Google Trends spike on searches such as ‘What is Brexit?’ as a demonstration of a key democracy failing. According to political scientists voters having an understanding of what they are voting for is key in a democracy. If it were true it would cast a shadow on the likelihood of the underlying electorate traits being useful for segmentation. The Google Trends story wasn’t necessarily correct; (but it was great fodder for the news cycle)

    • Google Trends is about the rate of change in searches, so it might be moved dramatically by a relatively small amount of searches
    • Having been working on using Google Trends, we’ve found that there are inconsistencies in data in terms of timing and peaks depending on which IP address it is drawn from and what is the exact mix of terms compared.
    • There is nothing but a hypothesis to associate the peak with people who were eligible to vote.

    National versus international businesses

    There are a number of British brands on the high street that are geographically focused for whom taking a resolute Brexit stamp would not cause brand harm or investor protest. Examples of this would be Tesco – who have pared back their international footprint and are likely to continue to do so, Wetherspoons, Poundstretcher and payday loans brands like Wonga.com.

    For more internationally orientated publicly listed companies, the UK becomes less attractive. Senior government thought leaders such as conservative MP John Redwood have made it clear ‘interference’ including voicing concerns about the Brexit process would be unwelcome.

    …companies who did not stay silent on the country’s EU membership would pay a “very dear economic and financial price”.

    Chief executives who decide to take a corporate position on the issue could lose their jobs while those campaigning against membership would ensure there were financial consequences…

    As the UK becomes a more isolated economy  two steps behind its European peers there could be a temptation to spin off their UK business. This could happen in two ways.

    Selling on local gem brands

    Selling on local gem brands (brands with only significant sales in the local country). Examples could be brands like:

    • Ambrosia
    • Hovis
    • Cabrini sportswear
    • K cider
    • Barclays
    • Wonga.com
    • Royal London

    Disposal of UK assets

    Alternatively disposing of UK subsidiaries would make sense as Brexit represents a permanent reduction reduction in profit margins. For someone like McDonald’s Restaurants, that would likely mean pressing ahead with an ‘all-franchise’ model in a similar approach to what it has taken recently in China.

    In order to sell they are likely to require some sort of assets rather than just a sales agreement with the parent company. If they have become only a UK sales organisation, then the viability of this approach depends on the supply chain. One way of adding value into the supply chain would be for these businesses to open up a direct sales channel.

    Companies like Unilever already look at how they can integrate into supermarkets supply chain, with ‘buy it now’ buttons on their own site that take you to their online retail partners. They could also open up a direct e-commerce channel; given the Marmitegate debacle with Tesco; expect examination of alternative business models like America’s Dollar Shave Club and Amazon’s Dash.

    Modern international brands are already used to marketing towards the ‘open consumer’ who was likely to vote remain. Products that feel up to date, innovative and socially responsible.  A classic example would be Dove, Innocent smoothies, AirBnB or the average family car. Using a brexit segmentation would feel uncomfortable or just wrong for these brands.

    Marketing to the pro leave part of Brexit segmentation

    A local business for local people with brands that appeal to leave voter demographics could be more explicit in courting leave voter’s spend utilising a geographic and demographic aspects to Brexit segmentation.

    Tapping into the ‘authoritarian outlook’ would mean tapping into nostalgia; throw-back branding and possibly rolling back political correctness in the name of common sense.

    An extreme outcome could be Robertsons bringing back their original Golly character; though thankfully I suspect that would be step too far – even in post-Brexit Britain.

    Rejection of expert is partly down to wanting a reduction in complexity. This has huge implications for a wide range of products, particularly in the financial services sector or mobile tariffs.

    Choice is the enemy, a simple product, down-to-earth, unambiguous in its claims. Mobile tariffs without bolt-on features, complex phone upgrade cycles or value-added services. In the case of pensions and insurance, with the assurance that they could help ward off a sinister future full of negative change rather than rich rewards. Perceived good value wouldn’t do any harm either.

    In terms of how the product or service fits into the Brexiter’s life it is less about being part of a creative expression of individuality. Instead it is more about the ‘grey man’; blending in. Blending in is a threat coping mechanism, a form of risk reduction (think Dilbert cartoons). It shouldn’t mistaken for being more community-spirited, instead the community is of mutual convenience – a shoal of people.  A consequence of this is that persona creation becomes harder or derivative, the stellar insight from the planner loses its gloss. Agency creatives are likely to struggle with consumer empathy beyond utility.

    From the advertisers perspective appealing to leave brexit segmentation means blunt simplicity rather than clever creative. Audience reach is still important, but a higher frequency is likely required to achieve a comparable impact. This is to get over the Brexiter’s higher degree of inertia to marketing and making them feel that accepting the brand is part of conforming within society. It is part of the eco-system, traditional brands have an advantage due to their familiarity and heritage. Even if its a new brand it feels as if it has always been part of the consumers fabric.

    More information

    Ben & Jerry’s came out in support of Black Lives Matter. Naturally, some cops are freaking out | Fusion
    Business Leaders Speak Out Against North Carolina’s Transgender Law | Wall Street Journal
    These 70 Corporations Want to Block North Carolina’s Transgender Bathroom Law | CBN News (US news outlet for the evangelical christian audience)
    How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why | Lord Ashcroft Polls
    How Demographics Decided Brexit | The Market Oracle
    How has Brexit changed the mindset of a nation? | Bucks New University Business School
    How do Britain’s ethnic minorities view the EU referendum? | Kings College London
    Making Sense of Brexit – the data you need to analyse | UK Data Service
    Who is voting to leave the EU and why? | openDemocracy UK
    Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit | Political Economy Research Centre
    The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left Behind: An Aggregate-Level Analysis of the Result by Goodwin and Heath – PDF
    Businesses that speak out for Britain’s EU membership will be punished, vows John Redwood | The Telegraph
    UK voters don’t understand Brexit, Google searches suggest | Ars Technica UK
    Marmitegate is ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ as cheese, chocolate and wine all face ‘punishing tariffs’, Nick Clegg claims | The Telegraph
    It’s NOT the economy, stupid: Brexit as a story of personal values | British Politics and Policy blog | LSE
    Brexiters would rather trust the wisdom of ordinary people than the opinion of experts | Quartz
    The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter | Politico
    Brexit Voters: NOT the Left Behind | Fabian Society
    Authoritarianism and Political Behavior by Janowitz & Marvick | Public Opinion Quarterly (Summer 1953)
    Voters’ personality traits in presidential elections by Barbaranelli, Caprara, Vecchione and Fraley | Personality and Individual Differences 42 (2007) – PDF document
    Personality Traits, Partisan Attitudes, and Voting Behavior. Evidence from Germany by Schoen | Political Psychology (August 2007) – PDF document
    Grey Man Strategies 101: Peeling Away the Thin Veneer of Society | Imminent Threat Solutions
    How To: The Modern Grey Man Philosophy | Loaded Pocketz
    EU referendum results | The Electoral Commission

  • Leatherman + more news

    Leatherman

    Origin Of Leatherman: The Road From Start-Up To Mega-Brand – great interview with Tim Leatherman. The development of Leatherman cam out of an unmet need. But what was of particular interest was how Gerber Knives went from Leatherman supplier to competitor by looking at the Leatherman production orders. There’s a lesson from Leatherman for globalised brands using ODM firms in places like China.

    Business

    Samsung Targeted by U.S. Activist Elliott Urging Separation – Bloomberg – interesting move, launched just as the Lee family transitions a leadership handover. Basically, break things up, and allow American activist investors to tear your business to pieces. Part of wider trend where technology is now viewed as value rather than growth stocks

    Consumer behaviour

    Loving Our Phones May Come At A Physical Price | Buzzfeed – not terribly surprising when you think about it

    Economics

    Spotify is causing a major problem for economists – Business Insider – surely the same as services? – HSBC global economist James Pomeroy recently published a fascinating paper that looks at this question. “The rise of the digital natives” argues that the increase in digital services like Spotify — and Apple and Google and Facebook and Amazon and on and on — put downward pressure on prices and inflation.

    Finance

    WSJ City – Woodford: Investors Face Short-Termist Pressures – Neil Woodford’s criticisms remind me a lot of Will Hutton’s The State We’re In. The key difference is that Woodford seems a bit suspect (paywall)

    FMCG

    McDonald’s Celebrates 26th Birthday in China | Whats on Weibo – great WeChat and Weibo brand marketing case studies from What’s On Weibo. McDonald’s is very well known, but is surpassed in Chinese success by KFC.

    How to

    Foundations of Data Science by Blum, Hopcroft & Kannan | Cornell University – (PDF)

    Use iMessage apps on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch – Apple Support – not the most intuitive process, quite easy to miss the whole app store process

    Ideas

    Nabeel Hyatt on Silicon Valley innovation vs invention – Business Insider – and herein lies why China and other countries are able to dial-down silicon valley’s halo and make the bay area look more like Detroit-in-waiting

    Photos: How Tools Start a Revolution | Learning By Shipping – iPhone (or any other smartphone) is not the bokeh you were looking for

    Media

    Shazam’s CEO Talks 1 Billion App Downloads And The Future Of The Brand | Forbes – a billion downloads to get to profitability…

    Verizon reportedly wants $1 billion discount on Yahoo | VentureBeat – expect more things to come out before this fight ends. It was inevitable that Verizon would revisit the value as this would affect many younger tech savvy Yahoo! customers

    Bloomberg Announces New Multiplatform Brand for Tech News | Adweek – interesting that much faster page load times is pulled out as a key differentiator

    Yahoo! rebrands its main app as Yahoo Newsroom, lets you post your own news links | TechCrunch – a mix of Metro style tiles and Apples News app, I don’t think that this will be a success as there are similar services with longer traction. The ironic thing is that these are newsreaders are still using RSS on the back end. The window dressing has changed, but the importance of RSS / Atom hasn’t

    Viceland UK scores zero ratings on some nights after Sky TV launch | The Guardian – I’d seen these numbers the previous week, but its not a good narrative for Vice. I suspect the problem is being on Sky given the propensity for cord cutting

    Online

    Introducing Marketplace: Buy and Sell with Your Local Community | Facebook Newsroom – second (or third) time lucky?

    Retailing

    Amazon bans incentivized reviews tied to free or discounted products | TechCrunch – this is going to have an impact on influencer relations by PR agencies

    Security

    Yahoo Disputes Report on E-Mail Scanning for U.S. Government – Bloomberg – ‘non-denial’ denial

    Yahoo Slams Email Surveillance Story: Experts Demand Details | Threatpost – would you believe Yahoo!’s denials? But how could they adequately disprove it now, the FBI and NSA won’t help them

    The Hacking of Yahoo – Schneier on Security – “state-sponsored actor” is often code for “please don’t blame us for our shoddy security because it was a really sophisticated attacker and we can’t be expected to defend ourselves against that.” – this might be Marissa Mayer‘s leadership legacy at Yahoo!

    Delete Your Yahoo Account | The Intercept – Yahoo program seems “in some ways more problematic and broader” than previously revealed NSA bulk surveillance programs like PRISM or Upstream collection efforts. “It’s hard to think of an interpretation” of the Reuters report, he explained, “that doesn’t mean Yahoo isn’t being asked to scan all domestic communications without a warrant” or probable cause. – It probably won’t impact Yahoo!’s core active audience of techno-neophytes, but it does nuke any fantasy Verizon had of growing the user base

    Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence – sources | Reuters – expect more dirty laundry to drop

    Software

    WeChat’s world | The Economist – a boisterous four-year-old living in Shanghai, is what marketing people call a digital native. Over a year ago, she started communicating with her parents using WeChat, a Chinese mobile-messaging service. She is too young to carry around a mobile phone. Instead she uses a Mon Mon, an internet-connected device that links through the cloud to the WeChat app – its a WeChat world, the other technology companies are just copying their innovation

    Behind The Crash Of 3D Robotics, North America’s Most Promising Drone Company – it’s just going to be inherently much more difficult for a Silicon Valley-based, software-focused company to compete against vertically integrated powerhouse manufacturing company in China

    Apple Said to Plan Improved Cloud Services by Unifying Teams – Bloomberg – I wonder what the implications could be for product leaks? Or are services an area of less concern?

    Microsoft’s bot platform is more popular than Facebook’s among developers | VentureBeat – interesting, though this might change with Facebook for Work

    Technology

    Encouraged by Apple, Sharp invests in OLED production equipment | Electronics EETimes – also managed to get some interesting tech that improves VR experience

    Sharp’s IGZO Display Makes Dots Invisible for VR | Nikkei TechOn – and Apple is looking to dial up production of OLEDs by buying from Sharp….

    Wireless

    Google’s 24/7 live support for the Pixel phones comes complete with screen sharing | Android Police – interesting step up in customer services, presumably what was required to get them into Verizon

    Source: Huawei passed on chance to produce Pixel phones, US division badly struggling | Android Police – big issues across handset business in US, interesting that they cleaned out the Honor marketing team despite them being the best performers. This is likely to create motivation issues moving forwards