Blog by S.Swaminathan

With so many in the industry caught up in the arms race of who can give out more rewards, no one has stopped to notice that most of them(loyalty programs) aren't particularly effective at building customer loyalty or returning profits.

According to a recent Jupiter Research study, "Too much sam...

Companies such as HP and Microsoft as well as P&G and Whirlpool, have begun an eight-week pilot to test the concept of an intelligent washing machine.

The mobile angle? The machine is tied into a home network that can alert you via SMS, as well as messages on the TV, that your laundry is done.

&...

It is a widely held belief that TV & Video are under a threshold of change. What can one expect in the coming decade? Here's what consumers want from TV & Video:

According to Peter Storck, president and founder of digital media consultancy North Points Group,

• 33 percent of consumers say they...

Here's a great interview with KV Kamath, CEO of ICICI Bank, India's second largest bank. He had given this interview to Wharton Leadership Digest.

I have often been in awe of the ability of this organization to have scaled-up in the such a short span of time.  The interview gives insights into t...

Many a times,  I find companies adopting this kind of an approach - "If my competitor has a feature, then I too must have in my product". This leads to a host of useless features in almost all products. Things consumers find neither useful nor valuable. Also, the sameness starts sprea...

Trying searching on your mobile. It's really difficult.

Web is not as omnipresent on mobiles as it is on PCs today. A whole new way of doing it on the mobile seems to be the answer. Also, the experience of the web on the mobile, is not as rich as it is on the PCs too.

Here's an interesting article on...

Increasingly, consumers can be targeted with precision. Thanks to the rise of new devices and media opportunities.

emarketer has this interesting report:

Implicit in the desire to target advertising is the recognition that its opposite, mass-market advertising, is no longer as viable as it was in bro...

When you are a brand of scissors, how do you create brand ambassadors? It's a old boring product and there have been no innovations too. Is there hope for such a brand?

Well, Fiskars definitely believes so. Welcome to the world of Fiskateers. 

There's a lot to share about crafts, scrapbook and ...

CNN Money writes:

According to Dick Kovacevich, CEO of Wells Fargo there's no such thing as an unprofitable customer - just one you haven't figured out how to make money on yet. And, he argues, if a customer is truly unprofitable, that's the company's problem, not the customer's.

Perhaps we have to wo...

Springwise has this post on Women only Bank:

Austria's first bank for women was recently opened by Raiffeisen in the ski resort town of Gastein. The concept was developed in association with Emotion Banking, which conducted extensive studies about women and finances, and how they interact with banks....