Customize news for everyone!

In their every day life, consumers like to manage their time in an efficient way. Watching selected news that correspond to their preferences are a good way to save time and to stay up-to-date. The Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Lab has launched a new website: News At Seven. This website has the particularity to show to consumers the news that are related to their habits and interests. Users can write their zip code to have local news also. The show is presented by a virtual anchor and customize for every person. This is possible by a computer program. The news are generated by the program itself that is searching on different websites for news and even for videos and pictures. The information is very topical, the users can come one hour after and there will be a bunch of new information. An important point for this kind of website is the reliability, the program put the references for the news and only a blog website is consulted.

Suppose the fact that News At Seven becomes very popular and decides to sale advertisement space, two forces that would be interesting to look at, in the Porter’s Model, would be the bargaining power of suppliers and the rivalry among existing competitors.

Concerning the bargaining power of suppliers, there is a few trends that will stimulate entry of those kinds of websites. The customization is an actual trend and companies are ready to sponsor websites that are visited by their target audience. Selling advertisement space represents an opportunity. The supplier power of targeted websites is low because there are a lot of suppliers. News At Seven will probably do not have a competitive advantage comparing to its rivals. Its real value is the concept; the cost does not seem to be very high, so for that reason, some companies will maybe copy it and the competition will intensify if the inventors of the News At Seven do not buy a patent.

For the moment, it seems to be the only website that offers news that are customize and up-dated every 20 minutes, but there is already competition. When you are visiting a website, a lot of them offer you the opportunity to receive news or even horoscope directly in your email box. So, you have access to news that you are interested in. A more indirect competition is the fact that people have favourite website and they consult them everyday to see if there is a new article. The arrival of News At Seven confirms the importance of customization and they will have for sure an impact on website that will increase their focus on their target segments.

The News At Seven project is not totally complete, the creators have a lot of future objectives, as an example they would like to improve the personalization of their website by including reminder for agenda scheduled and topics that interest your friends on Facebook.

----, News At Seven Beta Launch!, News at seven, October 29, 2007
http://newsatseven.com/blog/?p=11

----, News At Seven, InfoLab Nothwestern University,
http://infolab.northwestern.edu/project.asp?id=40

DALEY, April, Customized newscasts coming to your computer, CNN, October 16, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/15/cnnu.newscast/index.html

The mystery of the consumer’s mind

The consumer’s mind is a very interesting area. A lot of philosophers, scientists and marketers have study this subject without being able to explain consumer’s behaviour which is influenced by rationality, emotions, value creation and satisfaction. Any models can perfectly predict consumer’s behaviour. The neuromarketing has been able to solve this mystery. This technology is observing the brain activity. Depending on the changes of brain or the area that is active, searchers are able to see the impact of an image, tag line, music, brand, odour or taste on consumers. Different techniques are used to see the brain activities and the latest one is the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This new technology is very useful to test the effectiveness of advertising, product appeal or brand selection, and those are only examples. The neuromarketing is the perfect substitute to focus group or survey because people could not be influenced by the environment and they could not control their answer to the stimulus. Even if we do not know yet the real impact on sales, it is now easier to create product that fits to consumer’s preferences.

If we look at the neuromarketing with the Porter’s framework, the two forces that would be more influenced by this technology are the rivalry among existing competitors and the threat of new entrants.

First, the introduction of neuromarketing will probably increase the rivalry among existing competitors. As an example, if we take the market of soft drink, there is already a lot of competition between Pepsi and Coke. Because of the neuromarketing, the soft drink companies will be able to increase the efficiency of their advertisement campaign and to target more precisely consumers. The neuromarketing do not describe the preferences of consumers, it is only to do comparison so both companies will try to make modifications to their products, promotions and ads to be as closer to consumer’s tastes as they could. This tool will encourage company to invest more and more money in marketing, and it will be a never-ending war.

After that, the treat of new entrants is low because actually, the neuromarketing is a really expensive technology and it could be consider as an entry barrier. If actual companies use this technology, new firms will not be able to survive without using this tool. In the case that a company just decides to stay passive in front of neuromarketing, other firms will have a really big competitive advantage because they will answer more properly to the consumers’ needs and expectations. So, a new company that will try to enter the market will face outrageous costs at the beginning which could compromise its profitability.

The neuromarketing seems to be a very promising technology. However, there are a lot of critics concerning the ethics: some people think see neuromarketing as an experience on humans and a new way to manipulate consumers.

----, The Latest in Consumer Brainwashing—Neuromarketing, Organic Consumers Association, December 1st
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/neuromarketing.cfm

----, Neuromarketing, Wikipedia, January 21st 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing

FUGATE, Douglas L., Neuromarketing: a layman's look at neuroscience and its potential application to marketing practice , Journal of Consumer Marketing, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Year: 2007 Volume: 24 Issue: 7 Page: 385 - 394