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Here are the design responses to e-futures. If you want to contribute to the debate please click here.
Coping with change Internet changes business models The power and speed of the Internet is radically changing the way products and services are designed, built and sold. Here are examples of how design plays a crucial role in three areas of change in the automotive industry.
Product technology: designing products with electronic interfaces allowing users to stay connected
In the past Detroit's auto executives competed against one another with muscle, raw horsepower covered by chrome and sheet metal. Not anymore! Vehicles will become platforms for Internet access, e-mail, navigation systems and nationwide satellite radio receivers. Ford's 24-7 concept car envisions that future. It allows motorists to receive wireless communications services including e-shopping, stock transactions and searching for information.
Business-to-business: designing a web based link of plants, suppliers and dealers and the infrastructure to support this
Ford Motor Company and General Motors will move their purchasing operations to the Internet via business-to-business exchanges by the first quarter of 2000. Each company buys more than $80 billion worth of materials and components annually from tens of thousands of suppliers. By putting their supply chains on the web, the automakers expect to save billions through lower prices and transaction efficiencies.
General Motors is teaming up with Commerce One Inc. to design and create its virtual marketplace, called TredeXchange. Ford has formed a joint venture with Redwood Shores to bring its hub, AutoXchange, online. Both Ford and General Motors will encourage their suppliers to use the exchanges for their own purchases, as well as for expanding their customer bases and selling surplus inventory.
Business-to-consumers: designing web links and creating partnerships to track customers and sell products and services online
Ford has formed alliances with with Yahoo! of Santa Clara, California, to help operate a web site that provides Ford vehicle owners with manuals, recall notices, Ford Credit account information service reminders and trip information. The GM - AOL deal will develop services to enable consumers to connect with dealers through GM's BuyPower site, as well as buy and maintain vehicles through AOL's Auto Channel.
Brands online
A new direction
The world wide web has radically changed the way brands are built, promoted and maintained. Who would have imagined that service and technology based brands would dominate the top of the world's most valuable brands only 10 years ago? Yahoo! was only launched in 1994, but by some accounts it's now worth more than General Motors, Texaco and Merill Lynch. Amazon.com was quoted as having a value of $25 billion in 1999.
The new online world is going to be driven by virtual brands. Their reputation has been built on speed and quality of service. It is now necessary to recognise the power of a brand and its ability to move a physical traditional community over to the web. There is a strong belief that the internet is going to become one of the most important points of contact that a brand has with the consumer.
Defining, building and maintaining a relationship
A brand used to be described as a promise but as we move forward, a brand is a relationship which is constantly evolving. The brand has to represent the quality and nature of the relationship and recognise the value of the individual user. The internet allows the user to take charge of the relationship, to experience the product, investigate the service and interact with the service provider. The best Internet sites are extremely personal - in fact we can actually personalise our experience, so that it's exactly as you want it to be. One of the things that amazon.com has done very well is to deliver a site that draws the consumer in and keeps them there. Newer global brands like Microsoft and amazon.com manage to increase and extend their values and relationships with customers over and above their functional attraction.
In the future brands will need to be better, stronger, more distinctive and more valued brand whilst also providing high quality information.
Interbrand have developed the following ten observations on brands and their contribution to competitiveness.
Bricks and mortar businesses
Many traditional 'bricks and mortar' businesses who have a presence in the high street are challenged by the changes in customer behaviour and ways of interacting with services which the internet enables. Many banks, for example, are now offering on-line services. Connected customers no longer need to go into their bank to conduct business. Banking on-line avoids the hassle of the physical environment and, more importantly, it allows customers to bank and shop from home whenever they want - 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Banks and retailers are already utilising the services of design companies to help them understand and harness the trends in shopping which the internet is creating. New brands to attract customers and instil confidence are being created. The impact of the internet on the design and layout of the interior retail environment is being explored. Design companies are developing new types of products to coax customers to shop on-line on intranets and extranets whilst in-store. Attractive, easy-to-use, on-line terminals can make a small local shop into a large global store.
Schwab President David Pottruck recently introduced the concept of 'clicks and mortar' to capture the idea that a company gains advantage by being able to serve a customer wherever they happen to be whether in-store, at home, on-line, off-line or on e-mail.
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