4.

Research Finding

Research finding in means any result or output from a research and development activity, and
includes new or improved product, design, invention, innovation and development in any
process, technique, apparatus or machine;

In this research finding will discuss about data regarding the hypothesis and explanation
regarding the data

4.1 Data Regarding the hypothesis

Connected strategies replace episodic interactions between firms and customers with magical
user experiences.

The power of connectivity comes from delivering magical user experiences along with
amazing productivity and reduced costs. Tesla cars, for example, are digitally connected to the
Tesla service team. Routine maintenance and problems are addressed proactively, without the
driver ever making a phone call.

Another example is Disney’s “Magic Bands.” These wristbands track visitors throughout
Disney parks and enable unique customer experiences. Disney discovered the tracking
technologies in the hospital setting and launched Magic Bands on Disney cruise ships to keep
track of children participating in onboard camps.

Disney then expanded Magic Bands to their theme parks. The first application was “meet
and greet.” Disney characters can access information about a child’s name from his or her Magic
Band and greet a child by name. Magic Bands enable Disney visitors to order meals and have
them delivered to wherever they are, obtain customized recommendations for activities, have
personalized experiences when playing video games, and receive custom photo memory books
created from cameras in the park.

Connected strategies turn what used to be episodic interactions between firms and
customers into an environment of always being connected. Every company, not just Disney, can
provide these Experiences.

The connected customer relationship and connected delivery model can disrupt Markets.
The connected customer experience drives up the value that customers see, while the connected
delivery model reduces the cost of serving customers. Companies that focus on both can disrupt
industries. Meal kit services like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh are good examples.

These services deliver recipes and all of the ingredients needed for meals. Part of the value is the
quality of the produce, but the services also eliminate other pain points, which increases
customers’ willingness to pay. At the same time, meal kit companies have streamlined the supply
chain and cut out middlemen, reducing costs.

Through deep connections with customers, companies can direct them to solutions with lower
costs. In the case of meal kit services, local farmers can run their operations more efficiently
because they know who will buy their crops. If firms increase the gap between willingness to pay
and cost, they can create new competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Through connected customer relationships, companies recognize customer needs, request

solutions, and respond.

A connected customer relationship has four basic elements:

1. Recognizing the customer need

2. Translating the information to a request for a particular solution
3. Responding to the need
4. Repeating the interaction, which enables the firm to improve at 1, 2, and 3

Not all connected customer relationships are the same, however. There are four different
categories of connected customer experiences which align to different stages in the customer
journey:

 Respond to desire. The firm tries to respond to an explicit customer request very

effectively. This may be done rapidly or with a broad offering. Companies that deliver
this type of experience include Amazon, Lyft, and Airbnb. Respond-to-desire experiences
start the moment a customer knows what they want to order. The firm makes the last part
of the customer journey as smooth as possible.
 Curated offering. As the firm learns more about the customer, it responds to and
anticipates the customer’s needs by providing customized products and services. An
example is Netflix’s suggestions. Curated offerings occur earlier in the customer journey.
Companies help customers think about all possible options that could fulfill their needs
and identify the best options.
 Coach behavior. The firm tries to nudge the behavior of customers to help them
overcome inertia and decision biases. For instance, customers may want to take their
medication, but they are forgetful; or they want to lose weight, but have trouble sticking
to a diet. Firms may employ behavioral interventions in the form of personal feedback
and social comparisons. Coaching behavior occurs even earlier in the customer journey.
 Automated execution. The firm automatically deduces and anticipates the customer’s
needs, then fulfills them. For example, the firm might provide a behavioral medical
intervention, re-order milk or water, deliver glucose testing supplies, or rebalance the
customer’s financial portfolio. With automated execution, companies are aware of
problems or needs well before the customer and fulfill the needs with the right product or
service. The goal isn’t to transform every transaction into an automated execution
connected experience. In fact, some customers enjoy parts of the purchase process and
wouldn’t want every transaction to be executed automatically for them.

Repeated customer interactions enable companies to build sustainable competitive advantage.

Repeated interactions play a central role in connected customer relationships. These are
how companies learn about customers. Initial customer interactions are often just the tip of
the iceberg in terms of understanding and addressing customer needs. Beyond those initial
transactions, customers may have a more complex hierarchy of needs.

Companies can’t jump immediately, however, to becoming a trusted advisor. Slow,

positive feedback loops between companies and customers enable firms to slowly move up
the customer’s hierarchy of needs. The goal is to create a better fit between customer needs
and the company’s products and services. As that fit improves, the company draws in new
customers. This learning is hard for competitors to replicate.

“The promise of connected strategies is that through multiple customer interactions, we learn more
about them and slowly move up the hierarchy of needs. That’s where sustainable advantage
comes from.”
Connected delivery models range from connected producers and retailers to peer-to-peer
Networks.

Five different types of connected delivery models are:

1. Connected producers. These often provide product-as-a-service offerings. In the mobility

space,for example, BMW and Daimler just merged their ride sharing activities into a
company called DriveNow. BMW and Daimler produce the cars, organize the service,
and run the app. Disney is also an example of a connected producer.
2. Connected retailers. Like traditional brick and mortar retailers, these companies buy on
one side and sell on the other. Examples include Blue Apron meal kits, ZipCar, and
Netflix.
3. Connected market makers. One example is TrueCar which simplifies car buying by
matching customers with car retailers. TrueCar never gets in the way of transactions. It
simply brokers two sides of the market through its platform. This model reduces risk
because platform companies focus solely on connecting parties.
4. Crowd orchestrators. Uber and Lyft are unique because they don’t just match passengers
to existing drivers like cabs. They have created a new pool of suppliers by orchestrating
individual drivers and creating a virtual firm. From the customer’s perspective, it feels
like interacting with one big firm. Another example of a crowd orchestrator is Airbnb.
5. Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Transaction P2P network creators charge for using the
network,either as a transaction fee or a membership fee. Examples include Peloton for
truck platooning or Blabla Cars for ridesharing. Access P2P network creators don’t
charge to join the network, but they sell access to the network participants and their data.
Advertisers are the most frequent buyers. Examples are LinkedIn and Facebook.
Complementor P2P network creators establish networks, usually with free membership,
as a complement to other products or services they sell. For instance, Nike sponsors
online running clubs.

The connected strategy matrix helps firms chart a course for delivering connected customer
experiences.
The connected strategy matrix (Figure 3) is a helpful tool for mapping a company’s existing
activities, as well as the activities of competitors and new entrants. It can also be used to support
an innovation exercise. The matrix offers a structured approach for generating new business
ideas.

“If you think about the idea of disruption, it usually doesn't come from a company that uses the
same type of connection architecture as you do. Disruption usually comes from somebody who is
playing a different game.”

Connected strategies have two elements to them. What we are seeing across a lot of
industries is that firms are fundamentally reshaping the way they’re connecting to their
customers. Rather than having a few episodic interactions where a firm waits for a customer to
come in with their needs, firms are much more continuously now connected to customers, and
that allows them sometimes to even anticipate the needs of the customer. So that’s one part of the
connected strategy, which we call the connected customer relationships.

Now, the second part of a connected strategy is that I need to create these in-depth
connected customer relationships at an affordable cost. And so, the second part of a connected
strategy is a connected delivery model where firms are, again, connecting new players in the
ecosystem that previously were not connected. By putting these two things together, connected
strategies allow firms to have a better value proposition to customers, or they push up the
willingness to pay that the customers have, while at the same time reducing the cost.

Usually, the connection you had with Disney was a ticket. You would hand over the
ticket and enter the park, and that was the transaction that you had. Nowadays, the MagicBand
allows you, as a customer, to have easy, frictionless transactions. It opens up your hotel room. It
opens up the fast lane. You can easily purchase things with it. Of course, that sometimes makes
also the bill rather magical at the end of the trip because you didn’t even notice all you were
purchasing because it was so easy to do. But from the customer perspective, it makes it a very
nice experience.
What it allows Disney to do is to really know where everyone is within the park. As a
result, they can direct you, for instance, to a line of an attraction that is shorter. Or you can pre-
program a particular itinerary. That allows Disney to jumpstart operations at the moment they
open up the gates to the park. In some senses, this is where we call it the magic of the Magic
Band or the magic of the connected strategy: it makes the customer happier, while at the same
time drives efficiency for the company.

Every company has to answer two questions: what and how. What can I do to delight the
customer? How do I provide a magical customer experience? That is the element that Nicolaj
just touched on when he talked about opening your room wherever you are, ordering meals,
having a memory book automatically created. All of that is very exciting, and that drives up the
willingness to pay.

I’m an operations professor, and when I hear all the marketing people talk about those
customer experiences and the wow, I’m just going, “Who’s going to do the work, and who’s
going to pay for that?” Part of the magic with connected strategies is that we’re changing the
way that we work. We can, as Nicolaj said, jumpstart operations. We can do a better job at
scheduling people. We can automate some of the things. It allows us to provide these better
customer experiences at lower fulfillment costs, potentially. That is ultimately what shifts that
frontier. That trade-off that you always have between the customer delight and the fulfillment, it
shifts that frontier out. And that’s where you gain competitive advantage.

When we think about these different connected customer experiences, we sketch out four
different ways of how we see firms connecting with customers. Before going there, it’s helpful to
think about when you interact with a customer, there’s a whole customer journey a customer has
with you. It’s not just the product or service that they like; there are lots of other steps involved.
A customer needs to become aware of their needs, then a customer needs to say, “OK, how can I
fulfill these needs? What are the options? What’s the best option for me?” That’s not an easy
problem. I have to go about ordering this product. I have to pay for it. I have to receive it. Then
finally I can experience it. Then it’s some sort of after-sale service, maybe support. So, there’s a
whole customer journey.
4.1 Explanation regarding the data

Interactions between companies and their customers have historically been episodic in nature. A
customer identifies an unmet need (either independently or through persuasive marketing) and
then proceeds to browse for a solution until a satisfactory one is found.

In their new book Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Relationships for Competitive

Advantage, authors Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch provide a detailed examination
of how technology has changed the traditional customer interaction forever.

The drive to improve upon episodic interactions is built on two glaring weaknesses in that
process. First, customers have to do a lot of research up front and then wait for delivery (a
temporal gap). Second, customers must often settle for what the company has available rather
than what they really want (a value gap).

Siggelkow and Terwiesch describe four specific pathways for transforming episodic interactions
into the competitive advantage of continuous customer relationships:

Respond to Desire

Disney began experimenting with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag technology as far
back as 2005 when they used bracelets to keep track of children on their cruise ships. When the
technology was transferred to the theme parks, the Magic Bands, as they became known, became
an integral component of a magical guest experience. As the technology advanced, the
transactional advantage (paying for goods and getting Fast Pass tickets) has been elevated to a
point where characters can see the name of a guest as she or he approaches and offer a personal
greeting.

Curated Offerings

Publisher McGraw-Hill Higher Education has leveraged technology to replace textbooks with
interactive digital learning experiences. Students progress through the material can be tracked
and reported back to the professor, flagging any topic areas where the student appears to be
struggling. As such, each student: “thus receives a curated and customized learning experience
rather than a standard textbook.”

Coach Behavior

Nike has transformed the purchase of a pair of running shoes into the purchase of a wellness
system that builds a continuous relationship with customers and their peers. Microchips
embedded in the shoes generate workout data that analyzes performance while also allowing
customers to share information with their friends and family on social media.

Automatic Execution

Disney’s Magic Band features prominently here too, as technology allows company
photographers to deliver a complete photo album of your stay at the park: “without the customer
ever noticing a camera.” Customers no longer have to be harassed by photographers on Main
Street when they enter the park, and if they don’t like the photo album, they simply decline to
purchase.

The authors recognize the urgent need for close attention to data protection and trust
development as many of these capabilities veer towards: “the grey zone between Big Brother and
parental love.” However, their expectation is that the potential for operational cost savings will
continue to drive experimentation with and broader adoption of this technology.

Connected Strategy delivers a fascinating examination of the potential of continuous

relationships with your customers. Using rich examples and practical advice, this book offers a
clear roadmap to keeping customers for life.

Business Models for Transforming Customer Relationships

What if there were a way to turn occasional, sporadic transactions with customers into long-term,
continuous relationships–while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in operational
efficiency? What if you could break your existing trade-offs between superior customer
experience and low cost?

This is the promise of a connected strategy. New forms of connectivity–involving frequent, low-
friction, customized interactions–mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs as
they arise, or even before. Simultaneously, enabled by these technologies, companies can create
new business models that deliver more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win:
Customers get a dramatically improved experience, while companies boost operational
efficiency.

In this book, strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch reveal
the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive advantage. With in-depth
examples from companies operating in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility,
retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education, Connected Strategy identifies the four pathways–
respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution–for turning
episodic interactions into continuous relationships. The authors show how each pathway creates
a competitive advantage, then guide you through the critical decisions for creating and
implementing your own connected strategies.

Whether you’re trying to revitalize strategy in an established company or disrupt an industry as a

startup, this book will help you:

o Reshape your connections with your customers

o Find new ways to connect with existing suppliers while also activating new sources of capacity
o Create the right revenue model
o Make the best technology choices to support your strategy

Integrating rich examples, how-to advice, and practical tools in the form of “workshop chapters”
throughout, this book is the ultimate resource for creating competitive advantage through
connected relationships with your customers and redefined connections in your industry.

You now have the data at your finger tips, with so many digital touch points through out your
whole selling process. If you don’t make the most of the potential information and business
advantages it offers you, then your rivals surely will. If this is something that you are already
aware of, then the next question is how are you gathering your own business intelligence, and
how are you applying it. This book reflects a good, current state of play, summary of what is
possible, what might be possible, and what will almost certainly very soon be possible. It may
feel like you are having to run still to keep up with the Joneses. But if you don’t, in these faster
moving times, you will be left behind and in an era of small margins, inactive and  non proactive
behaviour could be the decisive factor in allowing your rivals to build an unsurmountable lead
over you.

It is now a fast moving industry, and this book’s recommendations may hold much less value in
five years time, but at the moment you have little to lose by spending the time reading and
considering their suggestions. Think about how you like to be treated when you engage with
other businesses, and which ones leave you satisfied or otherwise. Then ask yourself how you
would feel if you were having to deal with your own sales team. Those who are able to look self
reflectively, openly, and critically at these experiences and objectively assess whether their own
processes suck or soar will do far better than those who continue to operate in a certain way,
solely because that is how things have always been done in the company.
[Link] and recommendation

Conclusion

How can we use new technology to create Customer Experiences that replace episodic
interactions with frequent, low-friction, customized interactions and do this without increasing
(and potentially reducing fulfillment costs)

The challenges of Connected Strategy are said to be difficult:

 Consumers don't know what they need.

 Different tastes
 Flavors are easy to change

Connected strategies are divided into two elements:

 Connected Customer Relationship

Its can increase willingness to pay
 Connected Delivery Model
Its can Reduce Cost

Function connected strategy

 Minimize trade-offs
 Provide the best experience for customers
 Reducing operating costs

Higher Willing-to-Pay at lower costs! That's why Connected Strategy can be an industry
changer.

Impact of Connected Strategies on WTP and cost.

 Like innovation in shaping strategy, this business model will create a competitive
advantage for companies when companies increase the gap between WTP and costs for
transactions with customers.
 Connected strategy has effectively shifted from the existing efficiency frontier graph

Revenue models for Connected Strategies

Change WHAT is paid for

• Product vs service

• Pay-for-Performance

• overcome risk aversion in presence of unknown potential

Change WHEN the payment is made

• Pay-as-you-go/use/as value is created (e.g., freemium)

• overcome myopia of consumer

• requires change of HOW payment is organized

• Change WHO is paying

• think eco-system, not supply chain

Change WHY do customers pay?

• move up the Why-How ladder

• Change the currency

• Data vs Money

Technology Infrastructure

Sensing technologies
In this category, fit all technologies that directly measure aspects of the world that hold clues
about the needs or desires of customers or that help users express their needs.

• Sensors

• Gesture and voice interfaces

• Conversational platforms that make it easier for customers to express their needs (and
ask for clarification if the need is not completely understood)

• Augmented and virtual reality

Transmitting technologies

• High-speed internet at homes and offices

• Smartphones

• Network slicing with 5G

• Bluetooth Low Energy

• LiFi (wireless communication using light)

• LoRa (wireless data communication over ranges up to 10km with low power
consumption)

• Blockchain (improving trust of transactions that are being carried out over networks)

Analyzing technologies

• Rapid decrease in costs of computing

• Rapid decrease in costs of data storage

• World-wide cloud computing is feasible (also allows data to stay in particular

geographic areas)

• Machine learning and deep learning algorithms

• Quantum computing

Reacting technologies
• Improvements in AI are allowing automated responses at vast scale that are becoming
more and more personalized (e.g., Google Duplex)

• 3D printing

• Advanced robotics

• Autonomous vehicles

• Drones

Recommendations

Connected Strategy Is a method that connects companies and their customers by connecting
technology as the most important aspect in the development of the Internet of Things and
Artificial Intelligence.

With technology in a service, it will reduce costs for the company and make it easier for
customers so that the value of customer willingness is increasing.

In Connected Customer Relationship, 4R is needed, namely recognize, request, respond and

repeat

Connected Strategy book talks about new forms of connectivity–involving frequent, low-

friction, customized interactions–mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs
as they arise, or even before.

Enabled by these technologies, companies can create new business models that deliver
more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win: Customers get a dramatically
improved experience, while companies boost operational efficiency.

Authors reveal the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive

advantage. With in-depth examples from companies operating in industries such as
healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education.
For the first time product companies have unprecedented access to data that can be sifted
to extract information about its consumers, their likes and dislikes. They have the
opportunity to fine tune their products and services to delight their customers like never
before in the history. But can this access to information alone lead to better customer
experience and sales?

The book brings examples of real world to show how innovative leaders from different
sectors like medicine and entertainment have built a strategy that gives people
experiences truly beyond their expectations.

After explaining the need for a seamless strategy that moves from one part of the cycle to
another, the authors coach the readers on how to build a connected strategy. Workshops
at the end of each sections provide additional challenges to implement what you learn
from the chapters and helps cement the concept that the authors put forward.

If you are beginning your career in marketing and customer experience,  the book brings
information about what is the latest and best in the field. If you are at a level where you
need to shape and define how to use the abundant access to data and leverage its power to
enhance your product and services, the book has enough practical information that you
can implement in creating a new strategy that will help you make your product and
services more efficient.
[Link]

Siggelkow, nicolaj and Christian terwiesch, 2019. Cennected Strategy : Building Continuous
Customer Relationships for Campetitive Advantage. Boston: Harvard Business School
Publishing Corporation.

Julie Devoll. 2019. “How to Develop and Compete on Connected Strategies”,

[Link]
content-hub/[Link], in access in January
20,2022. 4.13 PM.
8. Exhibits
Figure 4 : efficiency Frontier
Figure 5 : elements of Connected Customer Relationship

Figure 6 : Elements of Connected Delivery Model