The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that the US consumer electronics market is in a state of recovery and should exceed $166 Billion in 2010. This is quite the accomplishment for an industry and an economy that has largely contracted since 2007. In any event, one cannot deny the rate and scale at which technological innovation has taken place in this industry. In less than 40 years, we have gone from Pong to the personal computing tablet (i.e. the rumored Apple iTablet). Below is a timeline which highlights past innovation and change, offering a window back to yesteryear, and the iconic gadgets and technologies that we associate with our past:

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An article by Nat Ives was posted earlier this week on Adage.com about existing media companies and their experimental foray into e-commerce. This comes at a time when media companies in general are looking for new ways to monetize their websites. Some of the recent, notable examples include, well-known brands such as:  Martha Stewart, WSJ, Lucky and Salon.

Much of this has to do with the fact that media brand have existing, unique positions from to generate revenue from e-commerce. While regular e-commerce companies invest millions on marketing research to drive traffic to their sites and convert sales, “…media companies have an advantage in this regard, in that their content is already driving significant traffic to their site,” says Michael Kessler, managing director at Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private-equity firm that specializes in media.

E-commerce has been growing well over the past decade, slowing down only slightly during the recent recession. According to Citi Investment research, 2009 e-commerce sales fell only 5.5% in the first quarter and 4% in the second, then increased 1.8% in the third and are slated to improve by 12% in the fourth. For comparison, advertising revenue fell over 14% in both the first and second quarters.

The ability for media companies to partner with outside retailers and technology is key in their e-commerce success. Martha Stewart Living’s original strategy revolved around e-commerce, but they failed to provide the proper inventory among other things. When they recently re-launched their store they were aided by outside retailers who carried all of the inventory and handled various other tasks.

What the media giant is good at is telling a story. Gail Horwood, senior VP-digital programming and strategy at Martha Stewart said, “…we’re experts in telling the stories behind things, and that’s really kind of the romance behind product sales…. I call it contextual commerce because it’s about providing a platform to explain why things are differentiated.”

Condé Architectural Digest is another media brand to recently open up shop. But with their content being focused on high-end home décor, the scope of audience and products to sell are much more narrow. Their model is based charging designers a commission for featuring their products in the online store. Simply stated, marketers look for the chance to advertise in environments where consumers spend time shopping.

What happens in this next year with these new e-commerce projects is anyone’s guess. “What we think this will be from a revenue perspective, honestly we don’t know,” remarked Mr. Gingras, Salon’s CEO. “I have not made forecasts. This is an experiment.”

via Nat Ives @ Adage

The New York Times published an article this weekend about the rapidly growing interest in retail marketing data. Online retail is rapidly becoming a realm for testing how analytic software can be used to determine household spending trends as well as online behavior. Research in this arena has been ongoing for sometime; Walmart for instance, has long been targeting specific goods at different locations based demographic data. Recent innovations, however, are rooted more in emerging analytic software, and of course, are a byproduct of the sheer volume of data that is increasingly becoming available.

The new data available includes both internal and external sources. Internally, companies are increasingly able to track point-of-sale and shipping trends. Externally, retailers are accessing census and other syndicated data sets. Additionally, companies also able to track visitors to other competitors’ sites, traffic from social networking sites, and most recently, the behavior of smartphone shoppers. Because the tools are becoming cheaper and more efficient at identifying shopping patterns, retailers are able to digest more digital information, which is shaping their marketing efforts.

To Dr. Davenport at Babson College, this, “…huge and growing ecosystem of data is an asset that some retailers are really beginning to exploit for competitive advantage…it brings more science into the business. Relying on gut feel is yesterday’s strategy in retailing.” But even the shrewdest of computing professionals would agree that the new technology is geared more towards helping retailers make decisions on pricing, product assortment and shipping rather than judging what products to create or order from suppliers. Lori Schafer, a retail expert at SAS Institute says that “…in the world of retail merchandising, there will always be a mix of art and science…but the more you can get into customer’s heads, the better off you are.”

Wet Seal, for example, has greatly developed its web presence allowing it to retrieve relevant data from the vast number of it’s customers. Specifically, they have created a feature called ‘Outfitter’, which allows users to put together their own outfits online. Anyone can browse the outfits and leave their opinions and comments. The user-generated data from this feature as well as from the new Wet Seal iPhone application, ‘iRunway’, allows the company to get a solid read on where fashion trends are headed, as well as potential groupings of items that may sell well together.

Another example of a company pioneering the way is 1-800-Flowers, which has apps for the iPhone, Blackberry, as well as the Android platform. 1-800-Flowers President Christopher McCann believes that “social mobile” retailing is the future for online marketing and increasing sales. And, McCann estimates that by using more sophisticated analytics software, the company has been able to streamine operations by about $50 million in just this last year. While many suggest that computers cannot reveal every aspect of human behavior, it is difficult to deny the benefits to using emerging data. Especially in a climate of cost-cutting, data provides retailers the opportunity to make the most informed decisions ever about how to grow their businesses.

via Steve Lohr @ The New York Times