Tinder for baby names

March 9, 2017 360446ar Leave a comment

Every year various lists with the most popular names of children pass by. The SVB (Sociale VerzekeringsBank, 2016) did research about the most popular names of children born in 2016. Daan, Noah and Sem are the top three names of boys. The top three for girls is: Anna, Emma and Tess.

But (young) parents to be who do not want to give such a standard name to their child needs to spent a lot of time to choose the right name.

Hours of brainstorming and browsing through name books combined with hours of arguing will lead to a lot of stress for the young parents.

But there is a solution!

Zwitsal, a brandname of Unilever, which focuses on the baby and toddler product market, introduced the mobile app “Zwitsal babynamen”.

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Business Case

Introducing the future of fashion with Coded Couture

March 9, 2017 459622sk Leave a comment

“We’re about to change the fashion industry by bringing the customer’s personality into the design process through data technology”. – Aleksander Subosic, co-founder of Ivyrevel.

Finding unique clothing can be difficult; custom-made clothing is usually not affordable and designing your own piece requires design experience, which most people lack. Ivyrevel, part of the H&M Group and the world’s first digital fashion house, partnered up with Google to solve this issue by combining couture with data technology. Together, they created the Data Dress: “A personalized dress designed entirely based on a user’s context signals” (Brook, 2017).

How does it work?

First, install the app and select an occasion e.g. party, gala or business, and a style for the dress. Then, simply carry your phone wherever you go (which you probably already do) and the app will use Snapshot API to learn from your daily activities, with your permission. During seven days, the app will capture context signals and ask you to confirm certain the data to ensure that it corresponds with your lifestyle. By doing all of the aforementioned, you become part of the value creation process. Finally, the data is passed through an algorithm that creates a virtual custom-made dress, ready for you to purchase.

Will customers buy the Data Dress?

According to a survey by Bain & Company, +/-30% of shoppers were interested in designing their own clothing. Furthermore, they found that unique products lead to lower return rates and create a deeper connection between shoppers and retailers (Wiggers, 2017). Thus, there is a potential market for the data dress.

Efficiency criterion

This video, shows that Kenza lives in Stockholm where it is -2°C and that she visited a fancy restaurant. Therefore, the app made her a black velvet dress with crystal details, reflecting her lifestyle. This shows that consumers will get a truly unique, on-trend, and custom-made dress. Additionally, consumers become part of revolutionizing the way we look at fashion. For fashionistas interested in technology this is the ideal combination, and it allows them to be early adopters within their community.
Ivyrevel aims to ‘merge fashion creativity with technological innovation.’ (Ivyrevel.com). Thus, by introducing the data dress, Ivyrevel will achieve this goal. Regarding costs, Ivyrevel is not dependent on designers and won’t need to invest much in production, since it already has a clothing line and production facilities. According to Adformatie.nl, the dress will cost €93.
I expect that Google will receive financial resources by allowing Ivyrevel to use its API technology. Additionally, Google enhances its positive reputation regarding technological innovation and receives positive WOM.

Feasibility of Required Reallocations

Currently, the app has launched in closed alpha stage and is being tested by selected global fashion influencers (Brook, 2016). Since not much information is available regarding the specific institutional arrangements and –environment, I will propose a few.

Ivyrevel must consider:

The protection of consumers’ privacy. Consumers are responsible for granting tracking permission and Ivyrevel will not share their information with other parties.
Safe payments within the app.
Production processes that are carried out under ethic conditions.

It is important that Ivyrevel makes clear arrangements for these kinds of issues to prevent problems from arising.

References

http://www.ivyrevel.com/se/codedcouture/codedCouture.html

Google blog: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/02/fashion-gets-digital-upgrade-with.html

Brook, J. (2017, February 06). Fashion gets a digital upgrade with the Google Awareness API. Retrieved March 6ƒ, 2017, from https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/02/fashion-gets-digital-upgrade-with.html

Business Insider: Wiggers, K. (2017, February 07). Google partnered with H&M-backed fashion startup Ivyrevel to build customised ‘data dresses’ Retrieved March 6, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/google-partners-with-hm-ivyrevel-for-coded-couture-project-2017-2?international=true&r=US&IR=T

Adformatie: H&M, Google en MediaMonks personaliseren jouw kleding. (2017, February 9). Retrieved March 6, 2017, from http://www.adformatie.nl/nieuws/hm-google-en-mediamonks-personaliseren-jouw-kleding

Articles

Air France-KLM’s customer intimacy strategy

March 9, 2017 400534tk Leave a comment

The Air France-KLM group has an great reputation when looking at customer experience and the usage of technology to enhance customer experience. Many innovations have led to this customer experience, such as Spencer the robot, the development of electronic bag tags and tracking devices, the use of artificial intelligence to provide customer service channels and the Happy Flow biometric token trails. These are a few examples of the innovation of the Air France-KLM group in the past years (Future Travel Experience, 2017).

What is customer intimacy?

Customer intimacy, means segmenting and targeting markets precisely and then tailoring offerings to match exactly the demands of those niches. Companies that excel in customer intimacy combine detailed customer knowledge with operational flexibility so they can respond quickly to almost any need, from customizing a product to fulfilling special requests. As a consequence, these companies engender tremendous customer loyalty (Treacy and Wiersema, 1993).

Customer intimacy at Air France-KLM

Air France-KLM strives to be the leading airline in customer intimacy. To get there, technology has to play a critical role, but the group knows that the largest impact on the customers’ experience journey can be gathered by customer interaction.

The group is investing in a customer relationship system and customer care and recovery, as part of their strategy. The biggest challenge for the group is to gather all relevant data and make them instantly available, which is difficult with many online and offline touchpoints. The ultimate goal is to ensure that front-line staff have an accurate real-time view of their customers, and on any servicing needs or commercial opportunities (Future Travel Experience, 2017).

Pozas Lucic (VP of innovation) highlighted an example ow how the connected customer relationship management system will benefit the experience of passengers in the near future. Imagine a connecting passenger who is flying Delhi-Amsterdam-Chicago. The passenger is a vegetarian and ordered a vegetarian meal, but by mistake this meal is not on the flight. Currently, new vegetarian meals cannot be created during a flight. With the introduction of the new connected CRM system, crew members can put a message in their devices asking the ground staff to pick the passenger up at the gate and guide them to the lounge where they can provide a vegetarian meal. After that, an automated message will also be sent to adjust the booking details so that it doesn’t happen on the connecting flight and the return flight (Future Travel Experience, 2017).

The success of customer intimacy for Air France-KLM

Air France-KLM was not afraid to differentiate their products and simplify the travel experience. All the innovation led to a 4-star airline quality rating (4 out of 5 stars)(Airlinequality.com, 2017). In Air France-KLM, innovation is everywhere and not just in a single department, which is why the group became successful. The group scores particularly well on the airport service such as the arrival assistance (on the spot recovery), check-in service and transfer service (biometrics and robotics) and the baggage delivery (e-tag and baggage tracker solutions)(Airlinequality.com, 2017).

Air France-KLM set the goal to become the leading airline in customer intimacy. The airline group is determined to simplify the journey, to offer passengers what they want when they need it, and to deliver personalised experiences. While neither the human interaction nor technology can achieve this alone, together they could well redefine the entire Air France-KLM experience (Future Travel Experience, 2017).

References

Airlinequality.com. (2017). Available at: http://www.airlinequality.com/ratings/klm-royal-dutch-airlines-star-rating/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2017].

Airlinequality.com. (2017). Available at: http://www.airlinequality.com/ratings/4-star-airline-ratings/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2017].

Future Travel Experience. (2017). Air France-KLM’s customer intimacy strategy: tech and human interaction. [online] Available at: http://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2017/02/air-france-klms-customer-intimacy-strategy/?utm_source=Future+Travel+Experience+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0d54fdd27d-fte_otg_100217&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c306aa3edf-0d54fdd27d-89986809 [Accessed 8 Mar. 2017].

Treacy, M. and Wiersema, F. (2017). Customer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-disciplines [Accessed 8 Mar. 2017].