By
admin, on January 25th, 2010
The volume of online sales on Christmas Day 2009 increased by 29% to £132m compared with last year according to a recent article from the Retail Bulletin, with Boxing Day drawing the highest sales volumes at £281m.
It seems as though many stores, both online and offline, started their promotions earlier in December, therefore you could still pick up a bargain before Christmas. This was particularly seen on Christmas Eve, which is traditionally a quieter day for online sales, but in 2009 sales rose by approx 68% to £181m compared with 2008.
David Smith, Director of Operations at IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) said: “It appears that this Christmas we saw internet activity becoming part of most people’s routine, whether e-mailing friends, catching up on social network sites or surfing for bargains. Online retailers were able to benefit from this changing consumer behaviour by achieving record sales
Continue reading Christmas Day Shopping Increase
By
Tunde Cockshott, on October 21st, 2009
Earlier this year Engagementdb released a social media brand ranking tool and an accompanying report. They rate the level of social media engagement and the number of channels of the top 100 brands. They then correlate this against financial performance. This tends to show that those brands with a high social engagement saw their revenues increase by 18% while those with low engagement saw a reduction of 6%. This does not take into account many other factors so it is a simple approach but it is one of the few instances where actual ROI has been applied to engagement.
By
Tunde Cockshott, on October 16th, 2009
Interesting work done by Stefan Herzog & Hertwig, R. (2009) on how to apply a form of wisdom of crowds, but when there is only one person. They call it dialectic bootstrapping.
The idea is that when you have to make an estimate of a potential value, such as a date, a numeric value a percentage etc, you follow this procedure:
1. Make your first estimate. This should be done in the way you would normally make an estimate; with as much thought and consideration you would normally apply.
2. Assume that your first estimate is off the mark.
3. Think about a few reasons why that could be. Which assumptions and considerations could have been wrong? What do these new considerations imply? Was the first estimate rather too high or too low?
4. Based on this new perspective, make a second, alternative estimate.
Then average the two estimates to get a new dialectic estimate – based on the
Continue reading Wisdom of one
By
Julian Brailsford, on August 25th, 2009
A summary of a few stories knocking around the media recently, for your edification, entertainment, and exposition:
Only a few do all the tweeting…
A new book "Visualized, the Information Atlas" by David McCandless reveals that
5% of users make 75% of the noise
20% are ‘dead’ accounts
50% haven’t posted in the last week
Only 5% have >100 followers
..And they’re not teenagers…
As previously mentioned on this blog, an intern at Morgan Stanley has recently produced a report on teenage media preferences and Twitter in particular. This reveals it’s not hot in high school because "it’s not safe". Teens prefer Facebook and MySpace because they have the ability to select who they want to connect to.
Matthew Robson (15) believes his report represents the collective wisdom of about 300 teenagers and comes to
Continue reading Twitter Stats and Studies
By
Paul Carysforth, on August 19th, 2009
This is the full copy of the research note written by Matthew Robson (aged 15 years and seven months), an intern at Morgan Stanley, which caused a stir after it was published by the bank.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/13/teenage-media-habits-morgan-stanley
Paul C
