April 2004

Threshold News

Who you gonna call?

Challenges in intelligence gathering are endlessly diverse. Sometimes information found in publications and databases, and on the Internet can only address part of your business intelligence needs. The information you are looking for may only be in the heads of experts or in the unpublished files of trade associations or government agencies.

But identifying the right person, and then getting those busy people on the phone and convincing them to share their time and knowledge with a stranger, is more than a little challenging. When done well, the payoff in intelligence insights can be exciting and invaluable. A well-rounded, corroborated view of salient issues emerges, ensuring both depth of understanding and timeliness of the findings.

Threshold Information’s team of experienced researchers includes specialists who have just the right combination of people skills and business information savvy to get through to sources of intelligence that can’t be found elsewhere. Phone research assignments that we have successfully handled, while maintaining the anonymity of the client, have included projects to screen potential suppliers, assess markets, and track down elusive statistics, to name a few. Whether your need is to contact five experts or 100, Threshold Information should be your first call.

Opportunities In Business

Coalition loyalty programs arrive

Supermarket loyalty cards, frequent flyer programs, buy nine sandwiches get the tenth free ... loyalty programs have become all too familiar to consumers, who are becoming as savvy at taking advantage of the offers as marketers have become at designing them. But is loyalty program overload reducing the effectiveness of these programs? Is a customer who is also enrolled in your competitors' loyalty programs all that loyal after all?

Some marketers have become dissatisfied with current results, and are looking for the next generation of loyalty programs. One likely candidate is emerging in the form of coalition programs, which unite multiple marketers who together offer rewards for "points" earned by consumers through purchases of each others' goods and services. The idea behind the programs is that offering customers more opportunities to earn points and more flexibility to redeem them will increase excitement in and, well, loyalty to the plans – a sort-of one-stop-shopping approach to loyalty.

Often such plans are built around a theme that inspires an emotional attachment. Upromise and BabyMint, which contribute to college savings accounts based on consumers' purchases of a range of goods, are perhaps the best-known examples. Until now most of these programs have been generally regional in nature, rather than national programs – "Coalition Lite" as a recent article in Colloquy dubbed them. But although these programs so far have been concentrated geographically, Colloquy calls them the future of loyalty marketing and warns that if you're not already a player, you're in danger of being left in the dust.

Some other examples of coalition programs:

Club Mom. Partners include Home Depot, Payless Shoe Source, Toys R Us, and others. With three million registered American mothers, Club Mom is planning an ambitious Mother's Day national rollout including new major national sponsors, expanded soft benefits for mothers, and a concerted membership drive.

Nectar (UK). The U.K.'s largest rewards program. Partners include Sainsbury's grocery stores, Barclays Bank, select BP service stations, Vodaphone stores, and others.

eBay Anything Points. Consumers earn points from eBay sellers and program partners such as FTD.com, the New York Times, American Advantage, and others, and redeem them to pay for items on eBay where PayPal is accepted.

Opportunities in Technology

Robotics: Is the mass market finally ready for robots?

Industrial robots are being installed in factories at a record pace. With 800,000 industrial robots in use now, demand continues to increase as prices fall – costs today are only 20% of what they were in 1990. Among routine applications, robots help build cars, harvest produce, and patrol the floors of offices and factories. And now domestic robots are poised to step out of the pages of science fiction, into our homes.

Roomba, a circular, low-slung automatic vacuum cleaner, may be the first successful mass market service robot. Over 200,000 have been sold, with most of those during the recent holiday season, through outlets like Brookstone, Sharper Image, and Amazon.com. The product gets mixed reviews for performance, but at $200, it is priced right for techno-geeks and early adopters. The more expensive Electrolux Trilobite has been available for two years in Europe and will soon be introduced in the US. Karcher also sells a high-end robotic vacuum called RoboCleaner.

The rapid rise in computing power and decrease in its cost is driving the development of affordable mobile service robots. Robotics itself, that is the technologies for vision and other senses, plus mobility and articulation, is developing less rapidly. It’s likely that the general purpose mechanical man of science fiction will never be widespread. On the other hand, with computing power already integrated into every kind of appliance from collating copiers to coffee pots, the role of the humanoid robot is being filled now by automated teller machines and mail sorters and checkout counters, to name just a few of the many machines that perform specific tasks very well.

Major investments and great strides are being made in military and healthcare applications as well. Some in-the-air and on-the-ground combatants will soon be replaced with robots. Drone aircraft have successfully dropped bombs in test runs, and other applications – along with budget estimates ranging to $34 billion dollars – are reported almost daily. In healthcare, significant developments are being reported in assistive technology, physical therapy, and remote delivery of services. The goal is to extend the delivery of healthcare services to a rapidly aging population, while combating soaring healthcare costs and a shortage of caregivers.

Military, industrial, and healthcare developments notwithstanding, the fastest growing robotic market over the next three years will be for domestic products. With lower prices and improving effectiveness, expect service ‘bots like lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners to become common in our homes and offices.

Here are two of the better sites to follow developments in this area:

Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University

Robotics Trends, up-to-date reporting on robotic technology