How 'Generation V' Will Change Your Business - WikiLeaks (15 pages)

Research

Publication Date: 3 January 2008

ID Number: G00153798

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How 'Generation V' Will Change Your Business

Adam Sarner

This research discusses how companies must adapt to market goods and services to
the online environment, which is growing in prominence and changing some
fundamental rules about the relationship between companies and their customers. CRM
practitioners and other IT leaders can use this research to prepare their organizations to
compete in the growing "virtual" environment.

Key Findings

• Traditional ways of selling to customers, based on demographic information, will

become irrelevant in the online world, which has its own merit-based system using
personas that conduct transactions and spread influence anonymously.

• Companies will need new skills and techniques to engage in and remain relevant in an

online environment. They'll need to target a customer's multiple personas, collect data
on their relationships and find new ways to be relevant to the customer.

• Providers of third-party customer data, business intelligence (BI) and analytic tools will

shift toward consumer applications, eventually arming companies with automated,
artificial intelligence, self-learning "persona bots" to seek customers' needs and desires.

Recommendations

• Determine your company's role in providing access to knowledge, social

status/reputation, and achievement or responsibility. Organize and target online
products and services based on the customer's journey toward self-actualization.

• Sell to the persona, not the person. Collect psychographic data to understand online

persona behavior and its interaction with others.

• Shift investments from known customers to unknown ones. Create virtual environments

as a way to orchestrate customer exploration toward purchases. Focus on the
influencers within the meritocracy.

• Develop and retain or outsource new skills to attract, connect with, contribute to and

gain insight into personas and virtual environments.

• Develop strategy, process and technology around relationships with persona bots, as a

tool of mutual exploration.