As each need is met, personal achievement rises and purpose is fulfilled. For first world countries, the lower needs are viewed as commonplace commodities, while the focus moves towards meeting much higher end needs of careers, vacations, hobbies and spiritual fulfillment. As foundational needs are met and commoditized, the attention moves upwards towards higher order needs in order to achieve fulfillment. For marketers, the news is good overall. According to research from IDC and Forrester, marketing spending is anticipated to increase between 3 to 5% for 2011. MORE >>

The bad news is that even with this growth, most organizations annual IT budgets will remain below 2007 levels. For these solutions we see little pricing power for vendors, higher performance / capabilities at a lower cost year over year, and standardization / consolidation. It seems that more and more of IT is indeed moving towards utility computing and fulfilling Carr’s assertions that IT Doesn’t Matter. As each need is met, personal achievement rises and purpose is fulfilled. So will this budget season prove to be scarier than most? MORE >>

Indeed, if one examines basic IT infrastructure like servers, storage and basic applications such as e-mail, Mr. Carr’s assertions are completely correct - that indeed most infrastructure solutions have become commodities with uniform products, standardization and little pricing power for the IT solution providers. As each need is met, personal achievement rises and purpose is fulfilled. As a result, Mr. Carr asserts that most IT spending be minimized based on the lack of bottom-line impact which can ultimately be derived from such investments. Not exactly. Latest Research. MORE >>

Hey, it might not be enough money to quit your day job, but it is a way to fulfill a passion, share knowledge, and build your expertise and writing portfolio. Society of New Communications Research Symposium VIP (very impressive pricing) in Boston December 5 and 6: Give a look at the agenda at www.sncr.org/symposium and if you want to go, e-mail me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net and I’ll send you codes for a little dough off the top. What should I do? Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. Watch what Disney does. MORE >>

serious marketing mix model considers competitive activities, product pricing, retail distribution and in-store promotion. It is certainly possible to add operational metrics as inputs: say, on-time arrivals if you’re an airline or order fulfillment accuracy if you’re a distributor or customer satisfaction scores for just about anyone. Here’s a fine mess: I was all set to review a paper titled “Marketing-Mix Modeling the Right Way”, partly because I found the title annoyingly arrogant and partly because I have doubts regarding the methodology it describes. MORE >>