ETD: 793 Why products don't sell; Janus the two-faced God?;
Web Address Sales Hit Record High
E-Tailer's Digest
etd at gapent.com
Thu Jun 10 12:12:45 GMT 2004
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0793 June 10, 2004
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Why products don't sell
[3] Is Janus really a two-faced God?
[4] Web Address Sales Hit Record High
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
An administrivia note. I will be in Ireland the week of June 13-20 and
will not be publishing E-Tailer's Digest. We will resume on June 22.
Everybody wonders why their products/services don't sell. Let's look at
some reasons why. What do you think?
Are you ready to rent music? It seems like a good idea, at least to
Microsoft. Soon you will be able to rent your favorite music for a limited
time. Maybe a new market?
Web addresses hit a record high. Are we going to see a revised dotcom boom?
Hot off this morning's presses... The May Department Stores Company
announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement
to acquire the Marshall Field's department store group and nine Mervyn's
store locations in the Twin Cities area from Target Corporation for a total
consideration of $3.240 billion in cash, subject to adjustments. The
transaction is expected to be completed in May's fiscal 2004 second or
third quarter.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK11.story&STORY=/www/story/06-09-2004/0002190679&EDATE=WED+Jun+09+2004,+05:52+PM
Tell us about your business which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?"
site. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And we have a
form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first proposed
this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we often don't
know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Why products don't sell
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Did you ever wonder why your products or services don't sell? You just
invented the better mouse trap, and it isn't flying off the shelves.
Here are some common reasons products don't sell.
1. There isn't any real market for the product. It may seem like a great
idea, but nobody wants it--at least, not yet. Perhaps mice are not an
issue to your target.
2. Customers don't think your business is qualified to sell the product,
especially in the B2B marketplace. In addition to product, customers need
to be sure you can support them, i.e., you can get the product to them in a
timely manner, you can address their concerns, and you have the staying
power to be there for the long haul. If you look at retail shelves, you
will find a long-term commitment to products, and it is very difficult to
crack into a large retailer.
3. You haven't identified your target correctly. With the better mouse
trap, luxury high rise buildings probably don't have a need for your product.
4. Your advertising isn't targeted to the right market. With our mouse
trap example, Forbes or Bloomberg radio are not your media. It's even
worse if you have a product that is designed for a highly targeted group,
i.e., let's say you have a software solution and you need to reach CEOs or
CFOs only. A trade show geared to the general public may not be your media.
5. Price is considered an issue to many, but I don't agree. If price were
an issue, companies like IBM, Cadillac, Nike and others wouldn't be
here. In IBMs heyday they were double the cost of products offered by
other companies. Yet they had as high as 90% of the market. Cadillac is
really an Oldsmobile with a different tag. And how can anybody pay the
exorbitant prices for sneakers?
Comments?
George
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[3] Is Janus really a two-faced God?
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Music rental may be the wave of the near future. We rent homes. We rent
cars. We rent movies. Why not rent music? It might be a very good deal.
We all own dozens, or hundreds of CDs that we haven't listened to in years.
They sit there on the shelf, gathering dust, waiting for the day we say,
"Hey, I haven't listened to this CD in the longest time -- I need to hear
it again." But, generally speaking, we rarely grab those old favorites off
the shelf. For most of us, CDs go into our frequent-spin rotation for a few
weeks or months, then get pushed aside when a new favorite comes along.
Microsoft has come up with a copyright management system referred to as
Janus that will allow music-site subscribers to download as many songs as
they want, plus transfer them to portable devices and even cellphones. But
like the ancient Roman god for which the program is named, Janus is
two-faced. Everything is peachy during the time period you've paid for --
you "own" the song until its expiration date. But an internal clock keeps
track whenever you connect to the Web, and once the "use-by" date of your
song has passed, poof -- your music goes bye-bye.
Essentially, Janus allows consumers to rent their music rather than own it.
The downloading world is hotly debating whether people will go for the
concept of renting many, many titles at once rather than buying one song at
a time.
We're already trained to rent movies, and in the long run, video could
present an even better use for Janus, which may be Microsoft's real goal.
According to news reports, Disney, America Online, MovieLink, and CinemaNow
are just a few of the big-time entertainment conglomerates that are
considering using Janus software for video downloads that eventually expire.
Hollywood has tried a couple of times to sell DVDs that self- destruct, but
so far the gambit hasn't caught on. Consumers hate returning their rentals,
but they apparently they don't like having unwatchable DVDs pile up around
the house, either. As technology and Internet connections improve,
downloading movies becomes more and more viable. Video downloads with
expiration dates -- in essence, downloaded rentals -- can't be far behind.
Details at...
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/34304.html
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[4] Web Address Sales Hit Record High
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The number of domain-name registrations has grown in nearly every year that
the Internet has existed. The most recent exception was in the first
quarter of 2002 when new sales fell to approximately 3.8 million from 4.1
million in the first quarter of 2001.
A record 4.7 million Internet addresses were sold in the first three months
of 2004, bringing the total number of registered addresses to a new high of
62.9 million, according to a study released today by Mountain View,
Calif.-based VeriSign Inc.
The report attributed the spike in domain-name sales to growing Internet
usage in Europe and Asia, as well as a rebounding U.S. economy. VeriSign
noted that 4.1 million domain names were sold in the first quarter of 2003
and 3.7 million in the first quarter of 2002.
VeriSign, the exclusive wholesaler of Internet addresses ending in dot-com
and dot-net, measured registrations for every available domain -- from
dot-org and dot-edu to country codes like dot-ch for Switzerland and dot-sg
for Singapore. It also included data on relatively newer domains like
dot-biz, dot-info and dot-museum.
The growing demand for domain names was fueled in part by the new
availability of Internet addresses that use Arabic, Chinese and Russian
characters, said Raynor Dahlquist, VeriSign's acting vice president for
naming and directory services.
"[We're] seeing multilingual adoption in the naming market really taking
off," Dahlquist said.
Details at...
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/34327.html
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