What is the impact of digitalisation in our everyday life and in the way of doing business?
According to Mark Curtis, Fjord’s Chief Client Officer, we are approaching the “Living service” era or more commonly called “The internet of Things”. What he says in his video it that this new way of living will have a huge impact not only in the way people carry out everyday tasks, but also in the strategies companies will need to adopt. In particular, he identifies this era as a combination of the digitalization of everything and the liquid expectation. Nowadays, even physical objects are becoming digital; lets’ think about automatic doors and curtains in hotels. However, the most relevant factor concerns how this digitalization is affecting customers’ experiences across industry barriers (that’s why Curtis uses the word liquid). So far literatures have been focusing on competition within industries. For Instance, Porter has dedicated his studies in identifying the dynamics of competitive intensity and attractiveness of a specific industry. But what about now? Can we still rely just on those?
What Curtis underlines is the fact that a customer who lived a great experience tends to have such high expectation even when experiencing other services. If I take UBER and I enjoy the online payment, in order to keep my satisfaction high, I will expect that any other service will allow me to do that; if it doesn’t happen it will result in disappointment and low level of satisfaction. Thus, in order to make this possible, firms need to observe what digital experiences other companies are offering inside and outside its industry.
Moreover, an other characteristic of “Living services” is that they aren’t designed for mass consumption but around individual needs. For this reason, any company should be always able to tailor, respond and adapt to changes. It is no more about meeting customers’ needs, but designing a product that also include emotional and physiological concerns of each different user.
An example is the new product launched by Google, Google Home. It is not just a speaker through what you can listen to music, it is a sort of personal assistant. Whenever you need an information about a location, an event or whenever you want to know what will be your appointments of tomorrow, you can say: “Hey google”, and it will immediately answer to all your questions. What makes this product customized to users is the fact that it uses the data it collected from previous requests to tailor other services (and probably Ads.) and thus to give them a unique experience.
Thus, would this really revolutionise the concept of competition? Moreover, don’t you think that we are paying these unique experiences at high price? What about all our personal data we are involuntary providing?
References:
M. Curtis (2015), An Introduction to Living Services. [Online]. Available at: https://youtu.be/DP9RUdoEhtI
G. Clauser and B. Butterwoerth (2017), Is the Google Home the Voice-Controlled Speaker for you?. [Online]. Available at:https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/google-home-voice-controlled-speaker/
