Competitor intelligence is a specific type of market intelligence. As a result, a good quality provider of market intelligence should offer competitor intelligence as part of its range of services. According to the definition, we found in Wikipedia, competitive intelligence as:

‘The action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors, and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers making strategic decisions for an organization’.

Literally, it means to know what is going outside of your business, in order for you and your products to be competitive and relevant to the market. It is inevitable when talking about retailers and competitive intelligence, not to talk about big data. And it is not just big, but it gets bigger every single day. The question here is if retailers could control the data gathering and how to manage the whole process. The truth is that there is more information available to the business than ever before. However, information that can really help a business make decisions is scarce and valuable. So you should pick and gather preferably. It is extremely difficult to measure the ROI of market intelligence, respectively of customer intelligence; nevertheless, it is clear that the price of projects broadly reflect the potential benefits. The most expensive studies are market entry intelligence studies, on the basis of which huge investments are often made (or avoided). 10 days left till the 6th Global Webit Congress in Turkey. Our speakers have prepared plenty of good practices for you, so book your tickets now!

Igor Beuker is one of Europe’s most wanted professional speakers, valued as one of the leading independent and outspoken voices on emerging trends, brands, marketing, media and disruptive innovations. Igor delivered 412 keynote speeches in 42 countries and fired up events like Google Zeitgeist, IAA, Ad Tech, Social Media World Forum, Social Marketers Summit, IAB Europe and WPP Stream. Audiences around the globe have rated Igor’s stories as thought provoking, refreshing and inspiring: "the true rockstar of pro speakers". Today we're speaking with him about the emotion to apply for a Webit speaker, to be amongst the Audience winner and what could we expect from him on the stage of Webit.

- Are you excited that you are among the winners at audience award to be on the stage of GWC so 10 000 visitors from EMEA and ASIA will be able to hear your thoughts and you will share your experience with them?

Very excited since I feel that Webit is a true power brand in events. I’d like to compare it to playing Champions League. And being elected in a contest by the audience is an extra ‘kick’ indeed.

- During the contest they were really big names in the digital and tech industry worldwide so what was the feeling to compete?

Really big names, so I felt very happy and a bit proud. However, I’ve been pro speaker for 12 years and have been doing 412 keynotes around the world so far at many great events. But not on Webit yet. So trust me, I was highly motivated to be part of your line-up ;-)

- What was your motivation to apply for a speaker at Webit and What are your expectations from the 6th Webit Global Congress?

What Webite has achieved is phenomenal in my eyes. It was a bucket list thing. I needed to speak here as well.

- We have more than 300 media from all around the world there that are very curious for news and launches so please share with us in before just a part of your topic so to keep it hot..:)

I will give insights into the largest advertising pitch in the world. How the $ 5 billion account global account Unilever was won with big-data, adaptive media modelling and predictive marketing. A scoop to the world with many actionable insights.

- Who would you advise to attend Webit Global Congress and why?

Exponential technologies will disrupt all industries. So I would recommend everybody in the C-level suite to come to Webit. Hurry up and book your Webit tickets now!

  78 per­cent of con­sumers would buy from a retailer more fre­quently if they received per­son­al­ized offers and 71 per­cent don’t believe retail­ers are effec­tively pro­vid­ing these offers. These results we can find in an August 2013 Retail Touch Points arti­cle. More than 50 per­cent of online retail­ers agree that per­son­al­iza­tion is fun­da­men­tal to their online strat­egy, still per­son­al­iza­tion tac­tics are often imple­mented with­out an estab­lished per­son­al­iza­tion strategy. One of the biggest advantages of Internet marketing is the ability to personalize the user experience. Here are three personalization strategies from three multichannel merchants:

Personalization is just a fancy name for segmentation

Personalization is just a fancy name for segmentation, according to Andrew Knight, manager of online user experience at big-box hardware retailer The Home Depot. 

“Personalization starts with customer registration; that’s where we get a lot of the segmentation data for personalization efforts,” he said.

Personalization then can address anything from customer geographic location to contact preference. What you need to do is to make the customer to provide the necessary data.

Use the customer life cycle as a personalization tool

For David’s Bridal, a marketer of wedding dresses and accessories, the wedding time line is the most important part of the segmentation strategy. Marketing messages are timed to what a bride might need or should have whether she’s six months or six weeks from her wedding date. Knowing the life cycle of your products means knowing what customers need.

Watch for and anticipate purchase triggers

More than just life cycle marketing, watching for purchase triggers requires an in-depth analysis of what products your customers buy following other purchases.

“Whenever a purchase is made, either over the phone or on the Web, it starts a communication strategy based on certain purchase details,” noted David Manela, vice president of strategy and business development at Vivre, a multichannel merchant of luxury apparel and home furnishings. “If [customers] buy a particular brand of dress, we know they’re likely to purchase another specific product in a couple of weeks. We try to anticipate and trigger that purchase with an e-mail.”

Personalization make customers special and they can feel it, they are looking forward to it. To learn more personalization strategies and share your own experience, come at Webit. Time is ticking away, only two week are left, so hurry up and book your tickets now.

  Pete Blackshaw is Global Head of Digital Marketing and Social Media for Nestlé, S.A. Pete’s career, spanning digital marketing, public policy and brand management, has always put the consumer’s voice at the center. Before Nestlé, Pete was the CMO of NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey that integrated social insight into core business strategies. In his book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World” (Doubleday) Pete shares hundreds of experiences with Fortune 1000 companies working to improve the consumer conversation. While at P&G, he helped lead the company to Ad Age’s “1999 Interactive Marketer of the Year” distinction.

‘Pete is truly the Godfather of Consumer-Generated Media,’ says Jay Rampuria, Global Head of Client Development.

He recently served as chairman of the board of the National Council of Better Business Bureaus and co-founded the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). An Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) “Great Minds” award winner, Pete is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Less than two weeks left till the 6th Global Webit Congress where you can meet Pete Blackshaw. Book your tickets now!

  It expands at any moment, so it is pointless to try to give definition for omni-channel. Marketo, one of the leading Marketing Automation providers gives a solid explanation of why marketers need to think Omni-Channel:

"Marketers now need to provide a seamless experience, regardless of channel or device. Consumers can now engage with a company in a physical store, on an online website or mobile app, through a catalog, or through social media. They can access products and services by calling a company on the phone, by using an app on their mobile smartphone, or with a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop computer. Each piece of the consumer's experience should be consistent and complementary."

Omni-channel provides the customers with multi-path purchase experience. In order to be recognizable on the market, you need to be everywhere and today, market is an aggregate concept. From their smartphone to the desktop to an in store visit; we are entering an omni-channel world, where consumers seek an omni-channel experience. Digital selling and omni-channel commerce have transformed the way customers shop as well as the way retailers engage with them. Store associates today are expected to deliver a customer experience that is as engaging, informative and profitable as it is accurate and efficient. To do this, they must have the ability to see a complete, omni-channel view of the customer, sell any unit of inventory across the entire retail network, and effortlessly handle cross channel transactions, such as returns and exchanges. Omni-channel is a way of thinking and the sooner you implement it, the more successful your business will be. Join the 6th Global Webit Congress to learn more about omni-channel solutions from digital experts. Book your tickets now!  

Responsible for as much as a third of all Internet traffic at one point, BitTorrent is associated with piracy in the public’s imagination. However, that is an unfair characterization. In fact BitTorrent protocol is an ideal marketing platform for brands and publishers. With its 170 million active monthly users, BitTorrent is better than Pinterest, IGN and Spotify. Nearly, two-thirds (63 percent) of that user base is under the age of 34. Half (51 percent) are high school students. The user base is quite big with a lot of potential, so the company focuses on the marketers, who are interested in doing business there. BitTorrent offers a few products as well. Bundle, lets brands and publishers package content to be downloaded by users in batches. Bundle is “built for bigger stories,” with five of 2013′s most downloaded bundles at 3 GB or more. The company also recently introduced Sync, which lets users share content across devices — not on a cloud — without limits. In July, BitTorrent unveiled a chat client, Bleep, which offers ‘a decentralized connection so you can send information without the risk of it being snooped on’. There’s also a growing media network that has clients including Spring, Hotwire and EA. As a President & CEO at BitTorrent Inc., Eric Klinker is responsible for an ecosystem of software, devices and protocols that moves between 15% and 30% of the world’s Internet traffic on a daily basis, and has more than 170 million monthly users worldwide. Prior to BitTorrent, Klinker was a pioneer in network optimization technologies. He served as CTO and Vice President of Engineering at Internap Network Services and CTO and Chief Architect at netVmg Inc., acquired by Internap. Klinker was an early builder of broadband networks. In various roles with @Home Network, Klinker was instrumental in the development of the world's first large scale, broadband ISP. Previously, he led engineering teams at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, focusing on information security, high assurance computing and multicast data communication. Klinker was awarded a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Do not miss the opportunity to listen Eric Klinker as a speaker at the 6th Global Webit Congress. Book your tickets now! Two weeks left till the best time to visit Istanbul.

In the beginning it was e-commerce. The customers were happy because it was much more convenient for them to shop online. It didn’t take long for mobile e-commerce to take place and become even more popular and comfortable. India, for instance, is one of the biggest е-commerce markets. With its over 250 million internet users and 900 million mobile subscribers, the market is only going to expand. Realising this, even traditionally offline retailers choose to enter the online market.

"We will never go the traditional retail route in India," said Manu Jain, India head of Xiaomi. "In a traditional retail channel, the overhead costs get passed onto the consumer.

Here comes something from the last days. Apple Pay - the new Apple’s wireless payments system. Why does it matters? For the moment, Apple Pay is still in the launching period, so no impact can be seen. Not yet. But if Apple, which reportedly has more than 800 million credit cards on file and expects to sell between 70 and 80 million new iPhones by the end of this year, thinks there’s a better way to convert customers on mobile devices, you need to be thinking about it, too. There’s also Amazon’s Fire phone, which lets you scan a real image and immediately to be directed to that product page on Amazon. Instagram is also trying to implement mobile e-commerce in its strategy.

"The online channel is a big source of data collection. We learn great insights to what products are working in which geographies," said Shivanandan Pare, head of ecommerce at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle. "This helps us in our offline expansion."

Don’t miss the 6th Global Webit Congress where the topic will be discussed by experts. Book your tickets now!

Dr. Yaser Bishr is the Executive Director of Strategy and Development at Al Jazeera Media Network. Yaser is leading the Network’s transformation from a regional broadcaster to a global media player.  He will be opening keynote speaker at the blue track of the Global Webit Congress. Al Jazeera has received prestigious awards from organizations across the globe. The network is honored for overall excellence in achieving its mission, in addition to praise for Al Jazeera's individual reporters and their work. At Al Jazeera, Dr. Bishr is leading its digital media strategy, workplace technology transformation, merger and acquisition, innovation & incubation initiative, and Al Jazeera’s global expansion strategies. Prior to Al Jazeera, Yaser was Chief strategist and business development Director at Lockheed Martin, based in the Washington D.C. Area with remit to lead the transformation of its intelligence and cyber business from government focused to commercial. Yaser has 21 years experience as an engineer, entrepreneur, and academic. Prior to joining Lockheed, Yaser had successfully co-founded and sold several startups in location based services and social media analytics in Germany and in the US. During his time as a professor in the University of Muenster, Germany, Yaser had published a book on Interoperability and Knowledge Management. He also has over 30 refereed papers and book chapters on various computer science topics. Yaser holds an MBA from Duke University, Fuqua School of Business where he was honored with the Duke University Scholar Merits Award.  He also holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Civil Engineering, an MSc and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. We are proud to have Dr. Yaser Bishr as a keynote speaker at the blue track of the Global Webit Congress. Join the amazing speakers by booking your ticket now!

Jon Myers is VP & Managing Director – EMEA for digital ad management platform Marin Software. Jon is responsible for delivery of the Marin Software platform to EMEA agencies and advertisers including iProspect, LBi, Neo@Ogilvy, MoneySupermarket.com, Sainsburys and Hotels.com. This gives him a unique insight into online advertising trends within both agencies and brands.

‘Jon is quite simply an encyclopedia of knowledge and experience of all things digital,’ says Michael Kirwan, Commercial Director at Latitude Digital Marketing.

Prior to joining Marin Software Jon was leading Yahoo’s search and display account management teams. Myers joined Yahoo after 12 years on the search and digital marketing agency side as a Director at both MediaVest and Latitude. Jon is recognised for his experience and thought leadership within the European online advertising industry as a regular speaker and moderator at conferences worldwide. He also sits on the Global Search Engine Strategies (SES) Advisory Board and regularly contributes his opinions to trade press as well as industry bodies such as SEMPO, IPA and the IAB. At Global Webit Congress you will have the chance to receive know-how from Jon Myers, regarding leadership in online advertising industry. Book your tickets now!

Twenty days left till the 6th Webit Global Congress and we have just sold the 6000th ticket. The organizers are working hard in order to deliver unforgettable experience. Webit brings in one place C-level attendees who you can join to connect with the world’s Digital, Tech and Media elite. C-level managers at companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. sounds impressive - you will be surrounded by ‘giants’. Experienced experts and speakers will take you to the digital world with helpful stories and advice. The venue, Haliç Congress Center, is “the only seaside congress center in Istanbul”, so it can be reached by all means of transport including by yacht. Not only this, but also the networking party will be on a yacht. Global Webit Congress is famous for its memorable parties. Webit Party in 2014 is powered by Fashion TV. So, Webit 2014 will be the meeting point not only of the World’s Digital and Tech Prophets but also of the most beautiful models from all over the world. Last, but not least - Istanbul, the pearl of Bosphorous, will tell you the modern version of a Thousand and One Nights fairy tales. It’s great to see that the attendees joining so far, are not only people who will attend Webit for the first time, but there are also Webit friends who will come back for the third, fourth or even fifth time. We are looking forward to welcoming you at the 6th Global Webit Congress. Book your ticket now!