By Fabrizio Ferraro, IESE professor

Open virtual cartography, Mobile phones with GPS and enthusiastic acceptance by users are driving the neo-geography boom.


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Study: 2nd Study on the Persuadability of Online Stores
Trends in e-Commerce: Personalization, Business Intelligence and Social Networks
Source: Consultora Multiplica
Date: February 2009
Abstract: What are the most important variables for persuading a customer to initiate and complete the purchase of a product via Internet? Responding to this question, identifying the best practices and detecting the new trends: these are the objectives of the second report on what this Spanish consulting firm specializing in strategy and digital marketing calls "persuadability" in e-commerce. The analysis focuses on the top 15 online sites in the United States, including eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Apple, Toys"R"Us, HP and Dell. One notable conclusion is the fact that these sites are drawing closer together in their scores. According to the study, the three most persuasive are Amazon, Overstock and Dell.

The study highlights the increase in personalized offers and recommendations; expanded use of business intelligence on the sites, greater refinement of persuasion techniques, more effective utilization of search engines, simplification of checkout procedures and better integration with social networks. One of the deficiencies highlighted is that e-commerce sites in the US, "are not indulgent with their virtual storefront and are not selective enough with the images used for presenting their products or the accompanying  texts.”

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Study: NetView Audience Panel
Source: Nielsen Online
Date: February 2009
Abstract: The current economic crisis has put the clamps on travel and vacation budgets. This is driving up Internet use, thanks to the advantages it offers over the traditional channels. This past February, nine million Spaniards (32% more than the same period from the previous year), went online in search of 2-for-1 deals and other discounts. The consulting firm says that 53% of those using the Internet for making travel plans are men, and that the majority seek hotels, hostels or rural accommodations. The study also points out that portals have become simplified and that users are now more adept. Additionally, they complement the information by offering forums, chats, blogs and other online resources. According to the panel, the most searched portals in this category are: Toprural.com, Hotels.com, Quehoteles.com and Solmelia.com. The report highlights the increased number (13%) of visitors to portals that advertise cruises, particularly Yachtchartersdeluxe.com and Costacrociere.com.

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Email is far more versatile than traditional mail, whose comparatively slow speed justifies its nickname of snail mail. Nevertheless,  email abuse, especially that of spamming, malware and phishing, is becoming increasingly menacing to companies, the general population and government institutions. Proposals for responding to this issue include Making Your Voice Heard Amid the Spam, an article by the renowned Internet guru Esther Dyson—simple, functional and full of common sense, which is perhaps why they are rarely followed—and even specific manuals. Among these, the Libro blanco del spam [White Paper on Spam], published by the specialized firm Spamina, in addition to a broad catalog of tools, filters and services aimed at improving email management, storage, retrieval and security.

Now, as email starts to reach intolerable levels of saturation and abuse (90% of the messages sent via Internet are spam, according to the aforementioned white paper), a number of measures have been put in place to try and eradicate these nuisances at the source. One of these is De-Mail, a project of Germany's Ministry of the Interior in cooperation with the operators Deutsche Telekom, the postal service Deutsche Post and the telco firm T-Systems. The project, whose launch date is targeted for 2010, is designed to make email as safe as certified postal mail. While this is clearly good news, it could have a negative effect on users' privacy rights. Those same concerns were recently raised by another email-related measure. Specifically, it involved Finland's newly adopted Nokia Law, which was passed at the request of the telecommunications giant, who was seeking to gain control over its employees' email in order to prevent leaks and industrial espionage.

"Here's hoping for an upcoming year of more productive e-mail... and that I won't need to write this column again in 2005,” wrote Dyson in 2004. She was wrong. In 2009, a reminder is still necessary.

Articles in spanish  MarketingDirecto, Kriptópolis, Cinco Días, and Ciberpaís

Everyone recognizes the important role that technology could play in increasing competitiveness, reducing costs and thus in helping to overcome the crisis. The problem is that the costs involved could be outrageous in such difficult economic times in which credit has run dry, just when it is most needed.

The proponents of open source feel that that their proposals could break this vicious circle, particularly in the realm of the public administration. Midway through last year, Scott McNealy was already calling attention to the savings that he said could be obtained by Spain's public administration institutions by switching to open-source applications. The cofounder of Sun Microsystems said that the case of Spain is striking because each year it spends an enormous amount of money on software that could be public and free.

The deepening of the economic crisis is increasingly giving rise to this type of argument. Numerous official organizations have recently revived this idea in attempts to save costs for their respective administrations. The Spanish newspaper El País cites the recent cases of Canada and the United Kingdom, while acknowledging the opinion of the country's Observatorio Nacional de Fuentes Abiertas, part of the organization CENATIC. This organization, backed up by the Ministry of Industry, several autonomous communities and the tech companies Atos Origin, Sun Microsystems, Bull and Telefónica, argues that the primary advantages that open source could bring to the public administration institutions are, "the reutilization, savings on licensing-related costs, and nondependence on a particular vendor.” On the flip side, its drawbacks include, "the limited availability of techniques specializing in open source, the lack of advertising and the preinstallation of proprietary applications on many computers."

Articles in  El País (spanish), Noticiasdot.com (spanish), DiarioTi (spanish), VietNamNet Bridge, The Inquirer, and El País (spanish)