Statistically Speaking

According to "The Online Shopper Deal Shopping and Value Panel Study," 59 percent of consumers begin their shopping at aggregator sites--a 5 percent jump from its March 2004 installment. The survey, conducted by BizRate Research, a division of Shopzilla (an aggregator site itself), also says that 71 percent of online shoppers find better sales and discounts online than offline.

The 15th annual Airline Quality Rating study, a joint effort by Dean Headley of Wichita State University and Brent Bowen of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, places JetBlue first, followed by AirTran, Southwest, United, Alaska, America West, Northwest, American, Continental, ATA, Delta, US Airways, American Eagle, SkyWest, COMAIR, and Atlantic Southeast. Additionally, the study reports that the rate of customer complaints increased by as much as 27 percent.

A Teradata study, "Customer Valuation Gap Survey," conducted by BuzzBack Market Research, shows that only 56 percent of senior executives at companies with revenues above $500 million can easily analyze data to understand the value of their customer base, what their customers value, or what they will want next. Not surprisingly, 86 percent of executives listed knowing what a customer will likely want next and when they are close to, or likely to, defect as being important for them to identify and easily access. Only 52 percent and 45 percent, respectively, of respondents said they actually could accomplish those tasks.

"U.S. Mobile Subscriber Consumption of Content and Applications M:Metrics Benchmark Report: February 2005" reveals that 6.2 million U.S. mobile subscribers, or 3.5 percent of the total U.S. mobile market, downloaded a mobile game in February--an 8.2 percent jump from January's report. The projected monthly reach of U.S. mobile subscribers accessing news and information by way of a browser is 22.6 million--12.9 percent of the market--indicating a 2.5 percent increase from January's amount.

A Datamonitor study sponsored by Siebel Systems and IBM declares that the world's largest 300 retail banks are failing to take advantage of sales opportunities. Stefano Lindt, director of Siebel Financial Services, asserts that the customer attrition rate for North American retail banks is about 12 percent, while in Europe the figure is in the mid-single digits.

According to a Forrester Research report, "US Mobile Growth Defies Conventional Wisdom," two thirds of all households had a mobile phone by the end of 2004--just half a percentage point behind Forrester's end-of-year forecast of 67.5 percent for 2005. The report indicates that households with mobile service at the end of 2004 had an average of 1.8 phones. In December 2004, 39 percent of households had only one mobile phone, an 8 percent decrease from January's reported figure. By comparison, 7 percent of households had four or more phones in December 2004, up 3 percent from January 2004.

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