Watch this space...

For the price of a train fare to London the free lectures at University College London might be worth considering.

www.ucl.ac.uk/events

I went to an excellent talk this week on :

Do Books Have a Future by Prof Iain Stevenson ( UCL Centre for Publishing )

The prof's conclusion was ...yes

• e book reading technology is still at an early stage ( less than 1/5 of 1% own them )


• Book publishing is booming, and a considerable contribution to the UK GDP


• one of the most popular internet sites is actually a market for print books...amazon.com

Future of the Post Office

Against my expectations Mary Portas ( Daily Telegraph Magazine, Saturday 6th March ) was quite kind to the Post Office, and not too cutting in her comments.

www.telegraph.co.uk/maryportas

If you are doing a question on the future of the Royal Mail / Post Office you will also find some official reports in full-text on :

www.parliament.uk

As well as the Mediatel Database...

Lots of information in print form in the Advertising Statistics Yearbook.

This is found on Park Street Level 1, Luton LRC

Stats material on all forms of media is available :

Newspapers

Magazines

Television

Cinema

Internet

Useful in particular to measure the effect of the recession on advertising.

Green / Sustainable / Eco Businesses

If you are looking for examples of green companies in the UK it might be worth checking The Sunday Times Green List. This will give you an indication of organisations who are promintly green.

In 2009 the top 60 included:

BT

Tesco

Willmott Dixon

You could check the company websites to see how green issues are promoted.

Information about the Green List can be found using the Newsbank Database, or the Times own website ( it was launched in October )

Don't forget also the Keynote Database market research report :

The Green and Ethical Consumer (2008)

Argos or online ?

Each week the Daily Telegraph saturday magazine does a one page feature on a UK business . This week ( 27th Feb ) it was the turn of Argos.

The articles have usually concluded that online shopping is a major threat to business, and particularly in this instance. Argos doesn't even give you the tactile pleasure of most high street stores.

Previous studies can be viewed at

www.telegraph.co.uk/maryportas

Next week she'll be looking at how the Post Office might survive.

For UK business these case studies appear to be a valuable supplement to our databases Marketline and Keynote

Store Loyalty Cards

Yahoo has recently agreed a deal with Nectar, the Sainsbury's loyalty card

This opt-in scheme will provide information for the search engine to target ads based on purchases.

2000 card-holders have already opted in.

Reported Daily Telegraph(2010) Advertisers use high street buying habits to target shoppers online, 13th February, p.13

Viral Marketing

A recent edition of the Grocer ( October 3rd 2009 ) makes a good point about the use of Social Networking sites to host Viral Marketing campaigns. As the audience is a young one for sites like BEBO, sweets are very popular for these campaigns. Hence viral marketing for Chewits ( pictured), Wispa, and Dime Bars ( strangely renamed Daim bars )