| E-commerce |
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"The new electronic world will revolutionise the way hotels and restaurants do business and only those who embrace this new electronic world will succeed and the Luddites will risk extinction."
| Egon Ronay, September 1996 |
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"We will stay aware of developments but it [on-line home shopping] is not of enormous importance in our area."
| Dick Johnson, Director of Corporate Affairs, Procter & Gamble, May 1997 |
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"It's easier for high-ticket items to justify advertising on the Internet. But for soup, which largely sells for less than a dollar a can, it wouldn't be as efficient a delivery system."
| Rob Desatnick, VP, Global Advertising and Promotion Services, Campbell Soup Co. |
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"Although there are a lot of hurdles to be overcome before selling online can become a mainstream activity, competition with retailers is not one of them. In fact most major retailers are also looking to electronic distribution to improve their sales. Distribution on-line is coming and it is a positive thing, not a threat."
| Sharon Christians, Director of Corporate Affairs, EMI Group plc, May 1997 |
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"We stick to what we know, which is store-based retailing. We don’t think the internet is central to our business. Selling over the internet is something which we have considered in the past but decided not to do."
| Eugene Gallagher, Asda, May 1997 |
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"We have been quite taken aback not just by the volume of response we have had on the Internet but also by its swiftness."
| Roger Alexander, Managing Director, Emerging Markets Unit, Barclaycard, 1995 |
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"Setting up a web shop is less expensive than setting up a high street store."
| Sally Taplin, Waterstone’s, May 1997 |
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"We expect to do between two and five per cent of our business through home shopping in the next five years."
| Ken Towle, Tesco, May 1997 |
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"Many people regard shopping as a pleasurable leisure activity – they prefer to visit stores in person."
| Sainsbury spokesperson, July 1997 |
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"Sainsbury believes that there is a proportion of the grocery market who would welcome a home shopping service, where customers can order their groceries via interactive TV from the comfort and convenience of their home. Busy professionals and families, people who find visiting a supermarket a chore that they would rather avoid, the less mobile and those in more rural areas, could all benefit from the new way of shopping. We see interactive shopping as a natural next step in offering Sainsbury’s customers choice. They will be able to decide when and how to order and receive their shopping."
| Kevin McCarten, Marketing Director, J Sainsbury, May 1997 |
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"Research has shown that about 15% of customers are interested in some sort of ‘surrogate’ shopping, but the majority still want to do their shopping themselves."
| Sainsbury spokesman, May 1997 |
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"The government understands the importance of full electronic transaction to business. Now that we have made the moves towards digital TV in this country, this will become a focus point for home shopping, and people will take to this quite quickly."
| Ian Taylor, Science and Technology Minister, March 1997 |
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"Fax is much less secure than the Internet."
| Jane Weatherbie, VP Personal Lending Services, Bank of Montreal, July 1997 |
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"The poor security of the Internet is more a perception than a real issue – and I do not think it is fully merited."
| Ewan Hutton, PC Banking Manager, First Direct, July 1997 |
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"It’s not at issue whether the Internet is secure or not – because clearly it is not."
| Anders Linsqvist, Internet Service Director, S-E Banken, July 1997 |
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"We can keep our values, but lose the time we spend trailing around for routine shopping and chores."
| Tim Berner-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, July 1997 |
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"The Internet will lead to many changes in society because it has potential to be such an efficient way to bring buyers and sellers together."
| Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, May 1997 |
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"If I make a customer-call, I take a card and look down to see if they have an Internet address: if they don’t, I know its going to be a tough call. In the US it is literally socially unacceptable not to have your e-mail address on your ID card, even if you don’t use it."
| John Chambers, President and Chief Executive, Cisco Systems, July 1997 |
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"There really is a whole new world in retailing and banking just around the corner. Retailers will be able to reach a huge audience for less than the cost of opening a store. Companies will be able to run their businesses far more efficiently. Interactive television is genuinely going to revolutionise the way we do business."
| Chris Townsend, Commercial Director, British Interactive Broadcasting, July 1997 |
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"We want to give customers access to banking 24 hours a day in the comfort of their own home."
| Anne Foote, TSB, May 1997 |
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"In the next two or three years we will see the global roll-out of smartcards by banks, and people will spend electronic money as they now spend cash."
| Nick Habgood, Chief Executive, MAOSCO, UK, August 1997 |
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"Electronic payments are the single largest facilitator of commerce for the future. With SET, consumers and merchants will make convenient bankcard transactions in cyberspace as securely and easily as they do in retail stores today."
| Steve Mott, Senior VP-electronic commerce, MasterCard International |
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"The Internet is proving to be the ultimate direct medium and the next generation of the direct business model."
| Michael Dell, Chairman & CEO, Dell Computers, March 1997 |
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"In 1996 (in the US), we made more money from our online publishing venture than we made from newspapers and magazines."
| Andrew Nibley, Executive Vice President, Reuters New Media |
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"We have so much feedback from people wanting to buy online so we thought it was a good time to do it. Everyone's being cautious but we see it as another service for our customers. It will never beat browsing round a store."
| Mary Cason, Digital Services Manager, Tower Records, UK, August 1997 |
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"Doing the shop on the Internet is a consumerist's dream."
| Nigella Lawson, The Times, June 1997 |
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"If you make things instantaneously available, people will more readily buy them"
| Mike Luftman, Time Warner Cable, 1995 |
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"The Internet will dramatically change the way we operate. Before long, I expect people will be going online to choose individual tracks to download to a writeable CD. The Virgin Bank will definitely move on to the Internet."
| Richard Branson, Virgin, January 1998 |
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"At Citibank we have a profound belief that the future of banking lies with the Internet."
| Meredith Williams, Managing Director, Consumer Banking, Citibank, UK, August 1998 |
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"This is the first time there's been no intermediary between British Airways and the consumer, and its very scary."
| Gary Prescod, New Channels Manager, British Airways, UK, May 1998 |
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"There is a huge difference in business attitudes [in the US and Europe] toward e-commerce... What the Americans see as a huge opportunity, the Europeans see as a huge problem.. There is no question that e-commerce is the next phase in our industrial revolution, and in a few years time it will be as ridiculous to talk about e-commerce as it is to talk about paper commerce today."
| Sue Griffin, Chairman, Global E-commerce Forum, Cable & Wireless, UK, September 1998 |
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"The Internet shakes the foundation of what retail is all about - selling to a mass market. The Internet requires us to cater to each customer.... and that's something we have to learn. There is no blueprint to follow."
| Ragner Nilsson, CIO, Karstadt, Germany, September 1998 |
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"What's my return on investment in ecommerce? Are you crazy? This is Columbus in the New World. What was his ROI?"
| Andy Grove, Chairman, Intel, US, August 1997 |
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"The Internet as a medium is the future of banking."
| Jim Sinclair, Head of Marketing, The Co-operative Bank, UK, October 1999 |
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"People don't want to book online. At the moment of truth they want to talk to somebody."
| Neil Thackray, uTravel, UK, October 1999 |
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"Our task is to provide shopping solutions for time-poor consumers and drive delivery alongside the customer's lifestyle."
| Nick Laffan, E-commerce Planner, Tesco, UK, October 1999 |
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"Buying cars online is inevitable"
| Bernard Bradley, Advertising Manager, Volkswagen, UK, November 1999 |
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"We don't think that buying cars is the same as buying a CD online - people will always want to sit in a car and drive it before they buy."
| Simon Warr, Spokesman, Ford Europe, February 2000 |
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"Top Shop started off as a fashion catalogue store, but the sky's the limit on the internet. We might end up selling holidays more than clothes. We will provide everything that is trendy with teenagers."
| Jane Sheperdson, Brand Director, Top Shop, UK, February 2000 |
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"Using a web site with the whole inventory listed is like going to a supermarket and having to take the goods you want from closed carboard boxes."
| Clive Vaughan, Director of Consultancy, Retail Intelligence, UK, February 2000 |
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"Virtual environments will never have the same effect as reality, they will never be able to compete with physical shopping."
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"I recall someone saying, ten years ago, that the only groups to make money from the Internet would be pornographers and lawyers. He was right."
| Simon Jenkins, The Times, UK, September 2000 |
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"If you go back to when catalogues were first introduced and people said they were wonderful - you get the catalogue posted to you, you choose the item in the luxury of your own home, you don't have the hassle of going out to the store, it's delivered to you - well, it never got more than 10% of the total retail market. I think the internet is a bit like that."
| John Sunderland, CEO, Cadbury Schweppes plc, UK, November 2000 |
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