Page 89 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M02_CHAF9601_04_SE_C02.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:07 Page 56

56 Part 1 Introduction

Q. Are there still a lot of consumers out there that research online but convert
offline?

Roberto Hortal, MORE TH>N: I’m not seeing a lot of those cases anymore. People
did display that behaviour years ago but most are now familiar and comfortable with
the internet as a distribution channel. People are also aware of the many ways in which
merchants, payment providers and regulators protect their online transactions. Indeed,
it seems to me I’m better protected when shopping online – from disreputable
merchants – than offline.
We do see consumers doing research on price comparison sites, then visiting direct
and getting a quote before they eventually buy. That figure is made up of early adopters
and is rapidly decreasing as well, on the back of familiarity, trust and changes by the
price comparison sites which mean that prices displayed are more accurate and less
likely to change now.
Q. Are you doing anything to move away from the last click wins [attribution of
sale to the last referrer to a site discussed in Chapter 9] model?
Roberto Hortal, MORE TH>N: As I’ve already mentioned a couple of times, this is a
priority for me. I believe finding such a model could be a huge competitive advantage
for a marketer. We’re working hard internally and with our agencies to develop and test
various approaches to a much more complex way to attribute sales to the ‘marketing
value chain’, with some success so far although we’re still well into the journey.
Q. Are you looking at other forms of online marketing like viral?
Roberto Hortal, MORE TH>N: I’m always looking at opportunities to do things differ-
ently. We did an interesting thing with viral last Christmas where we bridged online and
the real world. Our Personal Customer Managers emailed customers to let them know
of our Christmas opening hours and included, as a little present, a papercraft model of
our MORE TH>N wood people, the ones featured in our ad campaign.
The models could be printed, folded and glued into Christmas decorations. We had
quite a few downloads and I’m sure we made a few people smile. Some may have even
decided to stay with us.
Q. Can you talk a bit about Living, your green social network; the reasons for its
launch and the challenges of execution?

Roberto Hortal, MORE TH>N: Living is our main social networking activity. We’re not
new to social networking by any means – we’ve been successfully running
PetHealthcare.co.uk, a community and forum for Pet owners, for a number of years.
In the spirit of MORE TH>N, We Do More, last year we started looking for more
opportunities for MORE TH>N to enable conversations around other topics of interest
to our potential customers.
We commissioned iCrossing, our SEO [Search Engine Optimization, explained in
Chapter 9] partner, to use its Network Sense methodology to map the networks of
topics and conversations where our product, brand or site featured as part of the
discussion. This work identified a gap that we could step in to fill – we couldn’t find a
neutral, authoritative, trusted and consumer-friendly space to discuss practical issues
around how to live greener daily lives.
If it was to succeed, the site had to be genuine: countless companies have tried
and failed to infiltrate the social space (remember Zuzzid?) when the only workable
approach is to contribute and share freely. To be genuine useful. To really participate.
So we set it up using the tools that most bloggers use (Wordpress and plugins),
gave it an independent voice (the writers, all professionals, are completely independent