Tag Archives: channels

Business Case

You do the chic, we do the geek

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(1) Concept/brainstorm, (2) design, (3) sketch, (4) mould making, (5) polishing, (6) stone setting, (7) casting, (8) production, (9) quality control, (10) packaging, (11) shipping. That is how jewellery making is supposed to be. But, if it is to Zazzy: That is how jewellery making used to be…

Zazzy removes step 3 to 7 and 9. Besides, they have already taken care of step 1 by setting up templates. So, after designing your own (custom made) jewellery, it is only production, packaging and shipping. I think you already have an idea how they do it… right… 3D-printing.

They describe themselves as the Instagram for jewellery: Instagram is about editing photo’s in a simple and fun way, without the knowledge of photoshop. Zazzy is doing the same within jewellery making, creating “cool stuff” without the knowledge of (1) jewellery making and (2) 3d-printing software: One is able to choose between different kinds of jewellery types/templates, which he/she can fully edit, remix and customize. It is not possible (yet) to fully create a specific bracelet yourself, it needs to fit one of those templates. However, you can change a lot, including the material.

“We’re waving a middle finger at the current pre-designed and impersonal jewellery scene”

Based on the production price, Zazzy charges a 60% fee. However, the production itself has been outsourced to Shapeways.com, “The World’s Leading 3D Printing Service & Marketplace” (Dutch company). In this way they do not own materials and a 3d-printer, they only use “manpower”.

Beginning of this month, Zazzy launched their new platform: zazzy.co. On zazzy.co you are able to upload your own 3d-created jewellery and share it, integrate it in your site/blog and sell it. What is so special about that? The most powerful aspect of this platform is that you don’t need to contract manufacturers, with specific order sizes etc. Zazzy will create the products on demand, so there are no costs for setting up your own brand anymore. Selling your first product = making profit. That is something special, don’t you think?

“Zazzy invites you to new way of designing, thinking and creating on zazzy.co”

Zazzy charges the normal 60% production fee within this new business model and a 25% platform fee based on the product-margin, which the creator determined himself. So, Zazzy was already based on co-creation by selling customizable products. However, with zazzy.co the marketing is transferred to the customers as well.

Already 60,000 users designed a product on zazzy.me. I’m very curious about the outcome of zazzy.co. Customizable/personal products are trendy in a lot of different branches, so why not in jewellery? However, Zazzy is not that groundbreaking because you have to fit your design in specific templates. When browsing through the platform (zazzy.co) it all looks the same to me. So, one cannot really differentiate. For personal use, changing text, figures and icons is maybe enough to make it special and personal to oneself. But for brands these options are far from enough to differentiate in the jewellery market: There are so many brands out there….

Screen Shot 2015-05-03 at 13.48.46

So my question is: has the time come for niche markets and dummies within 3d-printing, or do we need to wait for some more innovation, in both production price and possibilities?

http://www.rockstart.com/blog/zazzy-launches-new-platform-to-create-and-sell-3d-printed-jewelry/

http://www.shapeways.com

http://www.sprout.nl/artikel/zo-zet-3d-ontwerpplatform-zazzy-de-massa-aan-het-werk

http://www.sprout.nl/artikel/startup-van-de-week/zazzy-sieraden-uit-de-3d-printer

http://zazzy.me/about-us/

Articles

How Electronic Word of Mouth can be a critical success factor in e-business

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This blog is based on the following study: Yoo, C. W., Kim, Y. J., & Sanders, G. L. (2015). The impact of interactivity of electronic word of mouth systems and E-Quality on decision support in the context of the e-marketplace. Information & Management.

EWOM is defined as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet (Hennig-Thurau & Walsch, 2003). One of the best examples of EWOM systems and indeed a prototypical EWOM system is the customer review system. Customers can post text-based comments, insert video reviews, and even respond to other customers’ opinions on the product or service in question through EWOM systems. The emergence of these EWOM systems has changed the way that businesses engage the customers as well as other businesses.

To investigate the impact of the interactivity of EWOM systems and E-quality of a website on decision support satisfaction, Olivers (1997) cognition-to-action loyalty framework is adopted as an overarching theory. Oliver argues that consumers build loyalty toward a brand cognitively first, then affectively, next conatively, and finally behaviourally. Adopting interactivity theory and E-quality is appropriate to represent the cognitive aspect of loyalty phases. When decision support reflects customer needs and preferences, customers feel satisfaction with this support. Hence, adopting this construct, decision support satisfaction is useful in describing the emotional phase of the loyalty framework. Finally, E-loyalty is employed to illustrate the conative phase of loyalty. Based on this theoretical framework the authors explore the relationships of interactivity of EWOM systems, E-quality, decision support satisfaction, and E-loyalty by proposing four research questions that can be found in the figure below.

1

The interactivity of EWOM systems and E-quality are the strong predictors of decision support satisfaction. Therefore, H1 and H3 are supported. The effect of the interactivity of EWOM systems on E-quality is significant, validating H2. Decision support satisfaction is found to influence E-loyalty, thus validating H4. See figure below.

2

These findings indicate that customer perceptions regarding the interactivity of EWOM systems are very influential on their evaluation of an entire website and their level of satisfaction with decision-making support. This study illustrates that EWOM systems and websites with E-quality help customers enhance their decision making process.

When the four aspects of EWOM system interactivity (reciprocity, responsiveness, nonverbal information and speed of response) are well managed, users are likely to experience decision support satisfaction with the e-commerce site. This result indicates that e-commerce sites should be encouraged to provide a better EWOM environment for reciprocity and advanced EWOM system functionality, which enables multiple channel communications as well as quick and proper responses to customer requests.

The authors believe that EWOM has become an important part of the online shopping experience. Understanding the phenomena is essential for the success of electronic commerce systems.

References:

Hennig-Thurau, T., & Walsch, G. (2003). Electronic word-of-mouth: motives for and consequences of reading customer articulations on the internet. Int. J. Electron. Commer. , 8, 51-74.

Oliver, R. (1997). Satisfaction: A behavorial Perspective on the consumer. In M. Sharpe, Satisfaction: A behavorial Perspective on the consumer. NY: Armonk.

Yoo, C. W., Kim, Y. J., & Sanders, G. L. (2015). The impact of interactivity of electronic word of mouth systems and E-Quality on decision support in the context of the e-marketplace. Information & Management.

Articles

Be famous and (dramatically) increase your number of followers!

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Only then you are credible…

I almost wanted to start with: “You cannot trust product tweets of celebrities…” But if that would be a surprise to you, I have some other shocking news to you: Santa doesn’t exist. However, if everyone knows the tweets are set up by the brands themselves, and the celebrities are paid for such tweets, why would brands still spent million dollars to celebrity social media product endorsement?

Opendorse did research to those product endorsement tweets: a tweet from Cristiano Ronaldo is valued $304.000(!) (See source beneath for more numbers). Note that this is the actual value of the tweet for the brand itself, so it does not say celebrities are really paid that amount.

As we know that those tweets are valuable and that it does not matter that we, actually, all know that those tweets are not “real”, what makes the “fake opinion/tweet credible to us, the consumer. That is what Jin and Phua investigated in 2014: “ Explicate the conditions under which celebrities can be leveraged as effective catalysts for brand-related E-WoM on Twitter.” They created semi-fictious celebrity twitter pages, where after they let students (east coast of US) fill in a questionnaire based on these profiles (which off course included a product endorsement tweet).

Jin and Phau found that high numbers of followers results in higher credibility of the celebrity (more physical attractive, trustworthy and competent). On top of that, positive brand tweets of a celebrity with a high number of followers results in higher product involvement/buying intention. This effect is strengthened in case of a prosocial celebrity. In contrast, a celebrity with a low number of followers does not effect product involvement.

(In order to differentiate between types of celebrity (prosocial/antisocial), participants read an article of the celebrity either engaged in charity work or involved in drug abuse and/or adultery scandal.)

On top of that, it is interesting that “we” are more willing to share a tweet if it is coming from a celebrity with a low number of users and if it is negative about a specific brand/product. Probably because we think that a tweet from someone with a high number of followers will be not new to our own followers.

Concluding, celebrities are more credible than ordinary users towards twitter users. If a brand wants to start with twitter celebrity marketing, they need to focus on the number of followers (not only because of the reach, but also because of the credibility) and the behavior of the celebrity. Maybe it would be even better to contact a not that well-know celebrity and let him upload a negative tweet about a competitor. It will be shared more often by other twitter-users, and then it will maybe get more attention.

However, we must not forget that a celebrity, who will promote a lot of products using twitter, will be less credible in the end. Besides, I doubt if everyone knows how much followers his or her followers have.

Then I got one last question to you: if you had to set up one celebrity tweet for Microsoft surface tablet, who would tweet what text, and tell me why? Besides, tell me why this tweet didn’t worked out well:

121120025009-oprah-surface-tweet-story-top

In turn I got one tip for Santa to be credible for old and young again: Open a twitter account and dramatically increase your number of followers… You are already famous!

Note: If you didn’t see Oprah’s mistake, take a look with what device she uploaded the tweet.

Seung-A Annie Jin & Joe Phua (2014) Following Celebrities’ Tweets About Brands: The Impact of Twitter- Based Electronic Word-of-Mouth on Consumers’ Source Credibility Perception, Buying Intention, and Social Identification With Celebrities, Journal of Advertising, 43:2, 181-195.

http://opendorse.com/blog/top-75-highest-paid-athlete-endorsers-2014/

Business Case, News

Thank god it’s Friday!

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A creative gateway to the festival Extrema Outdoor, the design and inspiration for a new buddha to buddha bracelet or the design for a new tattoo for Dré Hazes. These requests or so called Calls for Creation have already been answered, co-created and fulfilled using the Created on Friday platform.

Created on Friday is a video-based platform in which clients, creative minds and followers are connected in Creation Stories. With already 12 co-created final products and 16.000+ creative minds and followers, they are experiencing a promising start. What makes this platform different related to others and how does the consummation look like ?

Creating a Creation story process

1st Friday – Call for creation

On the 1st Friday at midnight, the client submit a Call for Creation video. With uploading this video based Call on the online platform, a client opens the request for action towards creative minds. As already presented above, the topic of call for creation can be anything of choice based on the client request for a unique concept e.g. design, art or a new marketing campaign.

During the first week, anyone with a creative mind can respond on a specific Call for Creation by uploading their creative solution. Again this response will be delivered in the format of a video-pitch. The video pitch will be shown to online crowd, to give them a proper feeling and understanding of the solution proposed by the creative mind (person, company). The online public or followers, in turn, will vote for their favorite videos resulting in a dynamic top 5 ranking on the basis of video views and votes during this week.

2nd Friday – Winner gets chosen,  nr 2,3,4,5 announced

On the 2nd Friday the top-5 will be frozen and the client decides which pitch will be awarded as the number one. Interesting fact is that the client still can decide to choose a winner outside of the top 5. Having said that the client’s favorites are presented in a frame on the client’s Call for Creation page. This way the client can influence indirectly followers’ voting behavior. The nr 2,3,4,5 of the video-based pitching contest will be awarded with money. Besides the financial rewarding, the top-5 creative minds and their solutions will be announced on the platform making use of a video. In this way the creative mind talents will be shown to all the followers. On top of that, the winning creative minds will be part of the Created on Friday wall of fame.

During the second week, in a Meet & Making of, the client and winning creative mind co-create, further develop and fine-tune the winning idea into a final creation. Taking into account that the client is responsible for all the resources needed to come up with the final creation.

3th  Friday – Final creation

After 14 days of pitching, voting and co-creating the final product will be presented. Not surprisingly, this will be done using a video message on the Created on Friday platform.

 Success

Using online video content during the creation story, allows both clients, a creative mind and followers to share their findings and ideas towards a large crowd. In my opinion, the use of different social media channels ( YouTube, Facebook, Instagram ), makes Created on Friday a unique marketing “machine”.

Secondly I am really curious about the impact Created on Friday could have on nowadays marketing/design agencies. Noticing that these agencies mostly of the time charge a lot of money and consume more than 2 weeks to come up with a final product.

Since it’s founding by the end of 2014 , already 12 Creation Stories have been created. In my opinion, many more will follow. Top priority will be the supply of new Calls for Creation by clients.

Created by: Luut Willen

References :

News, Opinion

Radio Rent-out!

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So after looking around on the web in search of some interesting customer co-creation contests and products, I found this (quite interesting, yet not good-looking) website (http://www.co-creatornetwork.com/index.htm) in which you could ‘buy’ your own airtime, and create a radioshow.

For 85$ a week you get an one hour show. Although the theme at this point is your general enlightenment, and transcending your earthly state, it’s an interesting idea to transfer this idea to mainstream radio. If for example you are a fan of techno music, only listening to your radiostation, because it really fits your taste of music but you miss certain songs, or think you could do a better job. It might be an idea for radiostations to rent out hours, or give them away in a competition (in which listeners give either creative suggestions, or Continue reading Radio Rent-out! →