Rishi Taparia - Issue #39
This week we look at Amazon’s fake reviews, how Zara keeps customers engaged, Amex breaking through the Chinese wall, what stops Amazon from becoming a bank, why referring to Go-Jek as a ride-hailing company is unfair and more. Enjoy!
Commerce
How merchants use Facebook to flood Amazon with fake reviews
Crowd sourced customer reviews from total strangers drive more decisions (both conscious and subconscious) than we probably care to admit, from where to get dinner to what seat to select on a plane to what car seat to buy, and why not? It’s called the wisdom of the crowds for a reason. So what happens when it turns out the reviews have been gamed, with reviewers being incentivized via gift cards or sometimes direct deposits? A Post examination found the majority of reviews on some of the most popular products on Amazon are fake, and coming from an unlikely source.
Why Zara Succeeds: It Focuses On Pulling People In, Not Pushing Product Out
Zara has changed the game of fast-fashion retailing strategy, creating an worldwide brand that often sells over 11,000 to 12,000 different SKUs in a year compared with the 2,000 to 4,000 sold at a normal retailer. It is now the world’s largest clothing retailer and continues to innovate. They manage to market to customers in new and innovative ways, the most recent being an AR experience in store. This article looks at how they have transitioned from the 4Ps of marketing model - Product, Price, Promotion and Place to the new 4Es of marketing strategy —Experience, Exchange, Evangelism and Every Place.
How Wharton Launched Warby Parker--and Dozens of Other Companies Just Like It | Inc.com
Wharton has long been about “turning out the world’s finest spreadsheet jockeys”, future bankers, consultants, PE guys and VC girls. However, having been the fertile ground upon which Warby Parker and Harry’s, direct to consumer startups that have revolutionized the buying experience, professors, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs are hoping to fuel an entire generation of Warby Parkers out of the business school. A solid read that explores the DTC market today, market dynamics driving categories ripe for the taking, the graveyard of companies and whether these startups are just outsourced R&D for larger brands.
FinTech
American Express closer to breaking into elusive Chinese market
Credit card networks have long been eager to enter the Chinese market, historically unable due to reasons not least of which include the Chinese government’s reluctance to allow American companies to see the spending habits of their citizens. However, according to communication from the PBOC and via a joint venture with Lianlian, Amex is looking like it will be the first company to be granted a license to operate. Huge news for Amex who’s success will be determined in no small part by how much of a head start they get over Visa and Mastercard. Interesting selection timing by the PBOC, perhaps a little reminder for Ant Financial and Tencent, illustrating just how much their respective successes are owed to the PBOC and the traditional credit card infrastructure didn’t exist?
Punjab National Bank (PNB) is calling in private detectives to help recover loans
In a story that is continues to unfold, this week the Punjab National Bank, which in February 2018 reported the biggest fraud in Indian banking history, is now seeking private detectives to help trace defaulting borrowers and their assets. Not a good look for the bank, who already had its gross NPAs standing at over 12% as of December 2017.
Why Amazon and Google Haven’t Attacked Banks
Why fight when you can partner? For all the talk about Amazon and Google (Amazon especially) turning into banks, they haven’t approached those guaranteed billion dollar opportunities with the same level of gusto as other experiments. Regulatory headache aside, one major reason is $$$. Banks, historically of the mindset that if it isn’t hosted here, no thank you, are now emerging as big potential customers for the cloud-computing making tech companies think twice about alienating them by becoming direct competitors.
Chase customers can now use their voices to unlock their accounts
“Alexa, what’s my bank balance?” Sort of, but not quite. Chase is rolling out voice-based authentication for customers over the next few months with a goal of reducing fraud and lowering costs.
As the customer speaks with the call center agent, a unique voiceprint is created using more than 100 physical and behavioral characteristics including pitch, accent, the shape of the customer’s mouth and vocal tract. Once the voiceprint is created, the call center automatically recognizes the customer on future calls, cutting out the need for additional security questions. The method offers an easier, more secure way to verify identity.
An experiment for now, but expect voice-based biometric to becoming increasingly pervasive over the next 12 months.
Technology
Go-Jek ventures into video streaming, partners with Vice on original content
Go-Jek comes to Hollywood! Well, sort of. The technology company (please note that it is no longer acceptable to call Go-Jek a ride-hailing company) has created Go-Play, a streaming video service that will feature original content crafted by the company’s new production house Go-Studios. Focused on Indonesia, there will be documentaries, short films, and feature-length works from local filmmakers. The company is also partnering with Vice, fresh off its launch in India, to create content for the service.
The News Is Good for Baidu
China’s search-engine giant has been a laggard in the markets, the forgotten musketeer trailing well behind rivals Alibaba and Tencent. Now, the company might have found a way to make its users stick around: tailored news content generated by artificial intelligence.
Random Tidbits
What the Mona Lisa Tells Us About Art in the Instagram Era
Like retailers have had to innovate in a digital world, so too have museums and art in general. Thanks to the the Internet, we no longer have to travel great distances to see Bernini’s David or da Vinci’s Mona Lisa - we’ll in fact be able to spend more quality time with them online. This NYT piece goes into how we no longer see masterpieces as “as an original work of art” but instead as ideas that can be captured in photos.
Quote I’m thinking about: On my trip to Rome I completed Italo Calvino’s If on a Winters Night a Traveller, a fantastic, albeit at times vertigo inciting novel which I won’t go into too much detail here. However, in the opening chapter there is a passage where the narrator describes an experience in a bookstore which I found delightful. In lieu of a quote this week, I have copied for you the passage in full below.
You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you. In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embat-tled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them. With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new). All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established. You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.