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I recently got a question from a student, studying Print Management at Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland. She is writing a paper on the ability of the print industry to compete with ecommerce. Can the improved printing technologies which are available today, compete effectively to maintain market share?
I replied that the question is off base. It's easy to imagine that a school with "technology" in its name would structure its courses in terms of competing technologies. But in the real world, companies that expect to survive don't blindly support one technology instead of another. Rather they evolve and adapt, using whatever mix of technologies make sense to profitably serve their customers.
The question of print industry vs. ecommerce feels is as unnatural as the question of brick-and-mortar businesses vs. ecommerce. Companies that expect to survive and thrive should operate with a mixture of techniques -- changing what they do and how they do it to take advantage of new opportunities, while capitalizing on existing assets. I'm reminded of the Circuit City ads on TV promoting the idea of buying goods online and then picking them up quickly at a physical store. In other cases, the customer may want to shop online -- using search capabilities to learn about many possible products, as in the case of book shopping; or using decision support tools to consider a multitude of complex options, as in the case of cars or top-of-the-line entertainment systems; and then do the actual buying face-to-face. In those cases, retailers face the challenge of how to hook online shoppers into buying from their stores, instead of going somewhere else that offers the same merchandise. That's not much different from the challenge that computer stores faced in the early 1980s, when customers would first go to the stores that had knowledgeable retail personnel. They'd ask all their questions, decide what they wanted to buy, and then go to a store that had no help but lower prices.
But I'm digressing...
Returning to the question from the student in Ireland, I don't see any conflict between the printing industry and ecommerce. The question mixes apples and oranges. The printing industry is a set of companies that in the past depended on paper printing, but that is rapidly evolving in electronic directions. Ecommerce is a sales channel, an alternative way of selling products and services, which most printing companies already use and should use far more in the future.
Printing companies that are savvy should use ecommerce to market their services: 1) traditional printing 2) print on demand and 3) electronic duplication and delivery.
Traditional printing and print on demand today typically require that you submit manuscripts in electronic form. Print on demand is even more demanding, requiring Acrobat (pdf) format, with the person doing the submission (whether a publisher or an author) taking care of all the formatting.
There's a natural evolution toward more and more of the process being digital/electronic, until the final product is also electronic.
The changing role of printers in some ways resembles the changing role
of video stores, which now rent and sell analog tapes, and increasingly
also rent and sell DVDs. At the same time, cable TV companies and some
Web sites make the same movies available on a pay-per-view basis. The stores
could and should create DVDs on demand (from online files) rather than
stocking
inventory. In general, they should look for new ways to add value and
serve their customers, taking full advantage of technological advances,
instead of fighting them.
Likewise, printers should be looking for new ways to serve publishers,
authors, and readers. Rather than presuming that their business is putting
ink on paper, they should look more closely at what their customers want
and how to better meet those needs.
When shopping for a bed and breakfast for a weekend getaway, my wife and I noticed that many such establishments depend on umbrella sites which group dozens or even hundreds of them from the same geography, all using the same basic template and style. For instance, Massachusetts Lodging Directory of Bed and Breakfast Country Inns & Small Hotels (a subset of virtualcities.com), The Massachusetts Bed and Breakfast Inns Directory (under bedandbreakfast.com), and Rimstar International. The typical bed and breakfast page at such sites shows you photos of the interior of the rooms for rent, lets you know the prices, and gives you the address and phone number. Typically, the proprietors know nothing about the Web. They just submit their information, pay their fees, and wait to be contacted by customers. The sparsity of the information and the similarity of style often makes it very difficult to distinguish one from another and decide which to stay at.
It's a very rare case where you can see online whether there are vacancies on particular dates, much less have the ability to make and pay for reservations online. Considering these businesses typically have half-a-dozen or fewer rooms, such sophistication is probably too much to expect.
But there are a number of things that such a small business could do to increase its Web traffic and hence bring in more customers. Ideas of that kind started occurring to me when I got a request for advice from my uncle who has a bed and breakfast called Edgewater in Mahone Bay in Nova Scotia and currently has a minimal listing at bbcanada.com. ( http://www.bbcanada.com/116.html )
First, I suggested that he keep his current page, that the new site he wants to build should be in addition to that, not as a replacement; so as not to lose the business he's getting already.
Second, when building his new site, he should keep in mind that, unlike his listing at bbcanada.com, what he posts will appear without context. He will need to build both the geographic and the business context.
Geographically, he should have maps (Eastern Canada, Nova Scotia, and Mahone, the town he lives in). He should also have driving directions from likely starting points in the US and Canada.
He should also include lots of photos -- not just of the rooms that he rents, but of his town, showing his house in the context of the block that it is on, and showing everything of interest within walking distance and within a reasonable driving distance, plus photos of himself and his family.
Business-wise, he should have a page that clearly states the prices and the business terms, and that clarifies the currency/exchange situation and what that means in purchasing power for visitors from the US. (Bed and breakfasts in New England should likewise have such explanations for visitors from Canada). He should detail the standard terms like check-in and check-out times and procedures, and anything else that he has found that outsiders are sometimes confused or surprised by. He should indicate the differences in price with season; and also indicate when he has openings.
The overall design for this Web site should be very simple -- no fancy effects, just text and photos, in plain static HTML -- so he could easily and quickly update your pages. He should be able to change the online indications of room availability in a couple minutes by hand, without the need for any fancy custom code.
Once he has taken care of those basics, he should focus on the cultural
environment, providing as much information as possible about his house,
his town, Nova Scotia, and Eastern Canada -- history, places of interest,
entertainment,
literature, everything.
He should include blurbs about and extracts from popular novels and movies that are set in his piece of the world, e.g., The Shipping News and Longfellow's Evangeline. He should include whatever he can by authors who were born or lived in Eastern Canada, e.g., Lucy Maude Montgomery, author of Anne of Avonlea, etc. -- she was from Prince Edward Island; there's a tourist trap devoted to her there; and all her works are in the public domain and readily available on the Internet. He could also include the full text of public domain books about Canadian history, which are available through the Gutenberg Project on the Web and on CD from my little publishing company.
Once he gets going, if he follows some simple design rules (like writing
unique HTML titles for each page and making sure that the first couple
lines of text of each page are meaningful), all this text should bring
traffic to his site by way of search engines, many of whom should be people
who are fascinated with his part of the world and plan to visit there.
Over the weekend, my wife and I went to see the latest Jennifer Lopez movie -- "Maid in Manhattan," a well-advertised mildly-entertaining piece of fluff.
At one point in the movie, Jennifer's son, age ten, has a question that she can't answer, and she replies matter-of-factly, "Google it."
They are walking up a New York City street. The mother, an underprivileged Hispanic, who works as a maid in Manhattan, has lived within a four-block radius in the Bronx all her life. Presumably, she never went to college. The theme of the movie contrasts her life style and that of the very privileged future US senator (son of a US senator) who falls in love with her. It's a modern Cinderella story, reminiscent of Flash Dance, except in Flash Dance the Cinderella had talent and had to prove she had talent to achieve her dream. In this case, Jennifer Lopez just has to be gorgeous.
But this stereotypically underprivileged person has seen the Web and Google, or used them or heard about them so often that she takes their capabilities for granted, as a normal part of her life and her son's life.
When she uses the expression "google it", no other explanation is required either for her son or for the movie-going audience. There's no mention of the Internet or search -- all of that is implied in the newly-coined verb "google". No big deal. To me the fact that that is not a big deal to characters of this kind in this kind of a movie is a very big deal indeed. To me that signifies that the Web has gone completely mainstream, that it is not just high-tech that we read about and hear about everywhere, but rather is an ordinary expected part of our daily lives, that we depend on it and take it for granted like refrigerators and stoves and microwaves and televisions.
The ten-year-old kid is shown to be bright when by chance he happens to be in an elevator with a New York state assemblyman who wants to run for the US Senate. The kid knows the candidate's voting record on environmental issues and makes some intelligent observations. The assemblyman's overzealous idiot assistant is shocked that the kid knows so much. But the assemblyman and the kid both take it for granted that all that info is readily accessible by all on the Web. Smart people know that and use that capability, regardless of their wealth, education, or background. Only fools don't.
To me this movie marks a stage in Internet history, somewhat like the cartoon in the New Yorker, back in July 1993, that showed two dogs looking at a computer monitor, and the one dog said to the other, "On the Internet, no one knows that you're a dog." That was then followed by the first appearances of URLs and email addresses on billboards and in radio and TV ads; and the first intelligent use of the Internet as a plot element in a high-tech popular movie with Sandra Bullock in "The Net," then the first use of the Internet as a plot device in a romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail." But in both those movies, and their imitators, the writers and directors felt it necessary to explain the technology. The people who used the technology were early adopters, a cut above the ordinary. You never see a computer in "Maid in Manhattan" (or at least I didn't notice one). In the other movies, computers were everywhere, and, in all probability, computer manufacturers paid the studios to have their equipment prominent displayed, as has been the case since the early days of PCs. Now it's a different ballgame. Computers and the Internet aren't just a part of the everyday office environment, the Internet and Google in particular have become an ordinary part of the English language -- not just how we do business, but how we think, how we deal with our children and with the complex world we live in.
Google, like frigidaire, scotch tape, post-it, and xerox has become so pervasive, so well known, that the brand name is used as an ordinary word. The brand name has become so successful that the trademark is at risk. The other words reached that status in large part because of massive advertising campaigns. I've never seen an ad for Google.
The other brands became household words because those products were the first of their kind, or at least the first to be widely used. But Google wasn't the first Internet search engine -- far from it. Infoseek and Excite and Lycos were on the scene much earlier. Then they were pushed to the side by AltaVista, which dominated for a while with the advanced hardware and financial backing and the national and international advertising of Digital and then Compaq. But with that backing also came enormous corporate inertia and old economy thinking that held AltaVista back and dragged it in unnatural directions.
Google, which came on the scene late and started as a university research project with little funding, focused on search and just search, and continued to do so over the years, without being seduced into trying to become a general-purpose portal with fancy graphics and dozens of different applications. It grew by word of mouth, not by advertising; by providing an excellent, unbiased, all-inclusive, easy-to-use Web search service, not by making claims on television. And it is now so dominantly popular that not Lycos, not Excite, not AltaVista, all of which advertised heavily and loaded their home pages with flash and irrelevancies, but rather the late-comer Google, with its simple and direct approach has become the household word, synonymous with Internet search, almost synonymous with the Web itself.
And their tradition continues. Shortly before the Christmas shopping
season, Google launched a new Web site called "Froogle", which focuses
on product search for shoppers. Instead of adding this service to the Google
site and cluttering it, taking it away from its core strength, they made
a separate site. They didn't even add an ad or even a link from the Google
site -- keeping that site as clean and simple as it was before. Over
the last few weeks, I've seen no ads for the Froogle site either -- whether
in print or on the Web. Rather they relied on providing a quality free
service and backing it with good public relations. As a result, over
the last few weeks, I've seen dozens of mentions of Froogle in on-line
and print magazines, and have received email from a dozen friends suggesting
that I give it a try. Word of mouth based on quality, not advertising,
wins in the new business environment.
It was fun being a generalist when the world was converging on the Web. You could make sweeping generalizations about the future of one industry after another, because the business implications of the Web were so clear. The Web would change everything for everybody. And it was getting easier and easier for everybody to use the Web.
Back in the dark ages before 1993, before the Web, the Internet consisted of a variety of separate applications: ftp and gopher and IRC chat and email. You might know how to use the one but not the others. You might have the software you needed for the one but not the others. And the Web was just one more such application.
Then in rapid succession the Web browser added capabilities, so you could email with your browser, and do just about everything else with your browser, including things that you had never been able to do before. Some capabilities were added with new releases of browser software. Others were enabled by "plug-ins". Within a few years, the Web browser became your universal tool for accessing resources on the Internet; and for those in the business of providing information and experiences, the Web page became the gateway to everything.
Some companies tried to set up separate, Web-independent services that required you to use special software as an alternative to your Web browser, and tried to keep you isolated from the rest of the Internet while you were engaged in their activities. With the Web, visitors could go elsewhere with a single click or by choosing a bookmark/favorite or by typing in a simple address. And it's only natural for business people to want to "own" their users and customers -- to not make it so easy for them to go elsewhere. But all such efforts were doomed.
Now the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction.
Instant messaging, with its millions of users, runs as a separate application; and which software you choose to use determines which set of people you can connect with.
P2P services, like Kazaa, have proliferated, taking advantage of the millions of users who grew dependent on Napster and got used to its procedures. Each such service operates as a separate entity. They all use the Internet, but they operate independently of one another and of Web-based activities. You can't participate by simply going to a Web address. Rather you need to download separate software. And while you are engaged in their activities, you can't suddenly with a click switch over to a competitor.
Wireless and cell phone devices can give you access to the Web, but only to a subset of what's there, because of limitations of the tiny screens and because of your limited input ability (not having a mouse or keyboard). So large Web publishers provide special presentations of their content intended for such devices and make special deals with wireless and cell phone providers so their content will be on the menu and easy for such users to access. And, at the same time, new kinds of people-to-people experiences, like text messaging, are opening up through handheld gadgets that aren't possible through ordinary PCs.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of people now have high speed -- cable and DSL -- Internet access. And in response, an increasing number of sites are catering to those users, presenting content and experiences that require high speed. In other words, while a few years ago, successful Web sites typically went out of their way to make their content accessible by everybody, regardless of their access speed; today the formula for success often includes focusing on a particular market segment, and ignoring everyone else.
Now, too, we see Microsoft expanding the reach of the Internet beyond the PC with its X-Box Live service. Everybody who uses their game system to play games with remote players is in fact using the Internet for voice over IP as well as for the game commands, but probably without knowing that the Internet is involved. You need the X-Box, and an Ethernet cable connecting you to a high-speed Internet service. But once you are set up, you don't need a computer and don't need to know anything about the Internet. You just play. And if you want to buy related products and services while you are connected, you can buy them from Microsoft and only Microsoft. They appear to have created a separate, proprietary service that runs over the Internet but that gives them complete ownership of the user/customer. And others are sure to try to imiate their success with new separate Internet-based services.
A few years ago, it was relatively easy to keep up with what was possible on the Internet -- you could quickly sample it all with your browser. Now new realms of experience can open up and involve millions of people without your having a clue that it's going on; or requiring you to spend money on new hardware and software to sample it.
Just as we were getting used to a global ocean, where all had equal fishing rights, now we see the creation of massive lakes where the fishing might be far better than in the ocean, but where you might have to pay to participate, if you can participate at all.
So now, as a user, it's tempting to fall back, to contract instead of expand. The multiplicity of possibilities forces you to pick and choose, to decide what you want and need and simply ignore all these other activities. Maybe one or two lakes have all that you want.
And as a business person, you should go out of your way to sample the new possibilities, the new experiences, the new communities of users. Because now instead of one Internet business environment, you are now faced with a dozen or more separate opportunities. And you need to consider which of these opportunities you should pursue and how you might be able to adapt your product or service to meet the unique needs of these alternate markets.
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