First flight journey. First flight ticket. It was a rectangular booklet containing 3 self-carbonated sheets which had the details neatly printed. It had my name and the best part was that it was next to the Indian Airlines logo. Felt proud! The pride was because the ticket cost was almost Rs.10,000 (which was loads of money around then).

I still remember how tickets used to get booked then. You called up your local travel agent and he would quote a rate for different airlines and different timings etc. You need to choose and then you end up ‘blocking’ the ticket. Once you pay, the blocking becomes a confirmation and you had you ticket to your destination. Whoa! Was it that complicated?

Let us take the trip back to today’s times. You want to take a trip, you get on to the internet and choose amongst the many aggregator brands like Ixigo, Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra etc, choose the sector, the dates and voila! You have details of all flights for the sector you require across all time frames and the cost of your travel including all taxes etc. You can choose your convenient flight which comes within your budget and you are e-mailed your ticket which you take a print out of and travel. If that wasn’t enough, you can follow any of these brands on Facebook or Twitter and you will keep getting the best deal at any point of time!

What has been explained in the earlier paragraph almost killed an industry, but made an EMPEROR out of the customer. The entire ilk of Travel Agents had to change their business model because of technology helping what can be termed ‘Price Discovery Mechanism’.

Taking a cue from where I left day before, I am trying to explore the pricing function and the effect of Web 2.0. Airline industry is just an example.

To my best knowledge all airlines uses a system called Galileo for their ticketing and sector planning requirements. Crudely put, Galileo is something similar to the Finacle of the Banking industry. But Galileo suffered from an ugly-face syndrome. Basically the entire system lacked a decent front end.

With a bit of help from Web Technologies like AJAX, Flash etc Galileo acquired a beautiful front end. All airlines started building their own front-ends running on the same back end. And thus started the advent of aggregator websites like the ones mentioned earlier and they started giving pricing of the various airlines on a real time basis on their website. Your friendly neighborhood travel agent was replaced by a user-friendly web application.

Add to this another entity called the payment gateway. This entity again uses Web 2.0 front end technologies to run on their complex database heavy back end engines and process payments through the internet. So once you as a customer discovered the price at which you will buy a product / service, you have these payment gateways which will help transfer funds from your bank / credit card to the vendor and your transaction is complete.

This poses a great challenge for the airlines. Especially the budget kind. They now have to track the pricing of their competition from all these sites and ensure that their pricing is at least a Rupee less. Thus price wars have acquired a new dimension. And basking in all this is the customer. He surely is the king.

This now is true of many other industries. Some examples:

• Rural India now uses Web 2.0 technologies sponsored by corporates like ITC (ITC e-choupal) to trade on their produce. The produce includes agricultural produce like Potatoes, Sugarcane, wheat etc.
• If you have ever used the internet to trade on stocks and shares, you have been touched by Web 2.0. These technologies help you in identifying the latest price of a particular share in the market and help you complete a purchase or sell transaction.
• Amazon, eBay, Flipkart etc are more examples of Web 2.0 helping in identifying the price and giving you the ‘best’ deal.

So the next time you get a quote for a stock, air ticket or a quintal of sugarcane over the internet, remember that pricing of the offering has been reached to you using Web 2.0 technologies. In the fond hope that the price that is being quoted is dynamic enough to appeal to your sensibilities and aid your purchase. Price Discovery has acquired a new meaning with the advent of Web 2.0.

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Web 2.0 lends itself to create a complex matrix, interconnecting web based tools thus a wonderful platform for a meaningful conversation. For many users, tools like Facebook, Twitter etc, start as a ‘fun thing’. But the number of serious users who use these tools to speak about brands, offerings and what can now be termed ‘word of the written word’ a.k.a ‘www’ as a substitute for ‘word of mouth’ is not a joke anymore. A recent report in a prominent newspaper (Mint) outlines how people are creating conversations about brands, without knowing that they are. Well, in this case, the user / blogger is not the kind who did it unknown, but the fact is, many are!

Should this be the case, how should one treat the online space? My two cents:

The online world is a very democratic experience. Users have the power to say what they want and users have the power to accept / reject what the other users are saying. A living example is Shashi Tharoor. A sporty remark made by the honorable minister on Twitter led to a long, raging controversy within 24 hours. The former diplomat handled with aplomb and probably believes that the controversy is history. But unfortunately, it is far from over. The same media which eulogized his tweeting habits helping a little girl in faraway Trivandrum get monetary support bashed him with front page news and unlimited airtime on how casual his approach has been to a particular measure taken by the Government. Lessons: Response – real time. Affects you in the real world and can continue to chase you for a while. The earlier link on this article outlines the response (this time positive) by a travel company to a prominent blogger when his ticketing was mishandled. Response – real time. Turned out to be a positive PR opportunity for the organization!

I heard a recent incident when a friend of mine tweeted about an issue with his iPhone and Apple started ‘following’ his tweets. Pronto! And within a day (or maybe two), Apple sent him a direct message with a link to upgrade his software. Response was real time and you have a customer who speaks about the brand. Online and offline!

• There are no rules. The rules are made as you go along

Ever watched Matrix – the movie? Morpheus tells Neo, “I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it”. These tools are available for you to use and with good knowledge! It is up to the marketer to make the rules. Since the online world is the best democracy, one will have people on both sides opining about you every step of the way. However, if it does good to the brand, the rules are right. If it leads to continuous discomfort, it means that there is an immediate need for tweaking. However, the response time available may not be high. Hence the need to be ‘on the feet’.

• The response is real time. So better be prepared to respond in real time

The online space is extremely transparent and puts you on the pedestal immediately. Every move on the web is noticed by millions of users and provides them with an opportunity to react or respond to it immediately. Consider the earlier example again. The prominent blogger here – Kiruba Shankar – blogged his experiences with Cleartrip – a travel company which provides ticketing services on the web. The problem was expressed online ‘in real time’ through Twitter. And the response was real time – through a combination of online and real world efforts. What could have been a potential disaster was resolved promptly leading to a ‘good experience’. Result: Happy customer. On your feet now!

• Be a child. Learn everyday

The online space changes the field every day. If one doesn’t learn and learn at the speed at which the world teaches you, chances are that you are being left behind. Though it is relatively easy to pick the threads and leap frog to be ‘with the crowd’, the lag will certainly have its effects. If you are still thinking ‘blogging about your offerings’ would be a great way to reach out to millions, think again. Twitter and Facebook have taken over a while back… a year maybe? And if we think Twitter and Facebook are permanent, maybe we would be wrong again. Probably there is something else that will come back to rule roost!

• Product life cycle is short

A recent interbrand report listed the top brands in the world and there are just three brands under the category ‘Internet services’ in the top 50 viz., Google (7), Amazon (43), and eBay (46). It is mighty difficult for an internet services company to sustain the pace with which users move. Add to it the cultural and geographic differences and the task becomes even difficult. So one needs to understand that the product life cycles will be short and it is important to re-invent and re-invest continuously to be up the curve. Google is a live example of that. Very few realize that Google offers thousands of services for the internet. Being a search engine is just one business vertical for the brand.

• Be up the curve and ride the wave

Easier said than done! It is important for identifying patterns on user movement from one service to another. When Facebook was launched not many realized how big it is going to be! Same case with Twitter. But now we see that applications within Facebook like ‘Mafia Wars’ and ‘Farmville’ are growing in numbers with millions of people joining everyday and thousands sustaining their stay! Maybe observing these patterns provide for excellent opportunities. Stupid how much ever it may sound, I believe that this is a fantastic opportunity for farming companies to provide ‘tools & ideas’ for Farmville users. There are many individuals who have taken a fancy to organic farming as a hobby and produce their own crop for their consumption. Providing tips to them and ‘virtual equipment’ would help growing their brand with them, however small the returns be now! Well, thinking of a product line for ‘Mafia Wars’? How about Reid & Taylor suitings and Set Wet Gels? The big baddie is gifted by the mentor with Suitings and Gel to make him look cool!

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