憑藉3S 泰普吉島年吸引百萬人次外國旅客

中央社   2009年11月28日


泰國觀光勝地普吉島發揮三個S 的優勢，每年平均吸引外國觀光客達百萬人次。現在它又與同樣位於安達曼海域的攀牙及甲米合作，向國際業者宣傳，希望開發商機。

這三個S指的就是Sun（陽光）、Sky（空氣）、Sea（海水），許多西方人正是為了要避開嚴寒的冬天和享受豔陽，而前來普吉島（Phuket Island）。 去年，普吉島的國外旅客達到116萬2236人次。

普吉島觀光業業者11月與附近的另外兩個府攀牙（Phang Nga）及甲米（Krabi）的業者合作，在泰國觀光局（TAT）支持之下，邀請19個國家的259位國外相關業者參觀第三屆普吉的安達曼旅遊貿易展（Andaman Tra-vel Trade）。

旅展從26日起到29日止，第一天主要安排國外業者參觀知名景點，第二天才正式開幕，最後兩天開放給當地民眾。

旅展在普吉島的中央百貨公司（Central Festival）的Phuja 展覽中心舉行，主要推廣安達曼海域的景色，以及普吉、攀牙與甲米所推出的1000項活動，包括浮潛、精油spa、竹筏遊溪、騎乘大象等。

這場旅展是泰國觀光局繼今年舉辦曼谷、清邁的旅展後，另外一項行銷泰國旅遊的重要活動。

以泰國第一大島普吉島而言，面積約543 平方公里，約等同新加坡的大小，人口30多萬，可以想見大量外國遊客替當地人創造出的觀光產值。

11家台灣旅行社業者也受邀參加旅展，當中有多位業者表示，他們很驚訝看到普吉島在最近三、五年內，出現許多度假別墅（villa）風格的飯店。

普吉島不僅有villa，很多靠海邊的飯店更直接在房間外頭再附加上游泳池，稱之為pool villa。

普吉島維吉特度假村（The Vijitt Resort Phuket）經理皮拉吾特（Peerawut Kunchorn） 表示，很多西方遊客喜歡到普吉島住villa，「suite（套房）是屬於城市的東西」。

台灣業者私下表示，台灣民眾也喜歡住villa，只是不太能夠像外國人一樣，好幾天只待在同一個地方讀小說，而喜歡參加活動或看表演。

此外，他們也向中央社記者表示，參訪過甲米後，發現當地自然景觀相當美麗，雖然從普吉島開車過去約要三個小時左右，從曼谷搭飛機過去則要一個多小時，不過他們一致推薦國人前往當地，當可一窺大自然的原始風貌。

广东业界:旅行社上市融资可打造“旅游航母”

中国新闻网 2009-11-28

广东业界表示，随着国家鼓励社会资本、各种所有制企业公平参与，积极引进外资旅游企业，有利于国内旅行社打造“旅游航母”。

　　中国国务院常务会议讨论并原则通过《关于加快发展旅游业的意见》消息传来，广东业界普遍赞同并纷纷表示，随着国家鼓励社会资本、各种所有制企业公平参与，积极引进外资旅游企业，有利于国内旅行社打造“旅游航母”。

　　广州地区旅行社行业协会会长、广东国旅董事总经理谷训才27日表示，在《意见》中，第一条即强调“放宽旅游市场准入，鼓励社会资本和各种所有制企业公平参与，推进国有旅游企业改组改制。”这无疑对于旅行社引进资金，增强自身实力迎接金融危机带来的挑战是一大利好消息。

　　据悉，今年10月15日，“中国国旅”登陆A股，成为登陆上证所的大型蓝筹旅游类上市公司。中国国旅作为一家同时经营免税和旅行社业务的中央企业，其“旅游+免税”的业务模式在资本市场是独一无二的，而且公司是旅游行业和免税行业的龙头，“中国国旅”的品牌在中国旅游服务类品牌中排名前列，公司免税业务具有十分强大的盈利能力。IPO发行后，中国国旅率先成为国内资本市场免税运营商。业界认为将进一步促进中国的旅行社积极打造“旅游航母”的发展蓝图。

　　谷训才告诉记者，旅行社行业的发展对提高居民就业，促进社会和谐发展，扩大内需，拉动经济具有非常重要的作用。但旅行社行业的市场集中度较低，需要发展大型的、具有很强竞争实力的旅游企业集团。另外，旅行社行业的国际化程度还不够，很多企业还只局限在国内旅游市场。而且，很多旅行社企业还处在粗放经营的阶段，没有建立起现代企业制度和先进的管理理念。

　　广东业界人士称，《意见》鼓励资本进入旅游市场，推进国有旅游企业改制，正体现于通过一批旅行社企业的改制上市，将有利于促进和带动旅行社行业的良性发展，有利于形成具有国际竞争力的大型旅游企业集团，提高中国旅游企业在国际上的地位。

低成本航空公司代码共享：路程漫漫

民航资源网 日期：2009-11-27

　　尽管目前行业内正在谈论有关低成本航空公司之间代码共享的问题，但是和两年前相比，目前代码共享已经不像以前那样盛行。这里面究竟发生了什么？行业内有没有成本较低复杂程度也较低的替代方案？

　　没有人敢表示这是很简单的问题。毕竟，代码共享和纯粹的低成本模式格格不入，可能造成成本高昂并且实施费时。但是从中可以获得额外的收益和机会来拓展航线网络，许多低成本航空公司在2004-2007年间不断签订代码共享协议，其中的开拓者是澳大利亚的维珍蓝航空公司，首先在2002年签订了业内第一份协议。

　　一些航空公司很快跟进，同时升级了各自的订座系统来促成代码共享。但是在过去两年，业内就很少听见新签定的代码共享协议。一些航空公司已经考虑使用更为简单和成本较低的替代选择方案。比如AirTran航空公司正在关注如今全新的技术。公司负责市场营销和规划的副总裁凯文·希利（Kevin Healy）认为新技术“能够创造出70-80%的收益，而且没有代码共享协议所带来的高成本和复杂性。”他认为传统的代码共享协议“只是很低的回报率，但是让人心烦意乱。”并且表示所谓的由捷蓝航空和西南航空正在开发的新一代代码共享体系是根本不值得跟进，“我认为我们公司能够将代码共享发展进入到下一阶段，同时并不需要很多大成本和复杂性。”

　　希利认为：“今后将出现一些跨大西洋和太平洋的低成本航空联盟。”但是他拒绝进一步透露详情，他表示网络能够被用于建立起全新的联盟模式。“对于AirTran而言这是更好的解决方案。代码共享协议成本太高昂了。”

　　位于爱尔兰的Dohop旅行技术公司，专门服务于低成本航空公司之间如何建立起联接关系的，他们也认为今后会出现低成本航空联盟。公司CEO 西于尔永松（Frosti Sigurjonsson）表示：“技术就是答案，这是自然而然的下一步发展方向。今后肯定会发生。如今——经济危机——这就要求更大胆的行动。”该公司了低成本航空代码共享的替代解决方案——航空公司能够在网站上提供联程航班。实际上旅行者是根据引导登陆另一个网站完成订票。尽管一些航空公司担心旅客自己完成所有联程预订流程，但是西于尔永松指出旅客已经自己独立完成了低成本航空公司之间的联程方案，并且愿意自我选择，以节省票价。“人们需要水晶球来关注所有的联程业务。我们所提供的就是其中缺失的一环——让旅客找到尽可能多的联程。对于航空公司而言，他们的航线网络也可以倍增。有时候我们访问航空公司网站时，常常被告知——我们飞机不运营那里。这实际上对于消费者的登陆访问所造成的是不利的营销。”

　　马来西亚远程低成本航空公司——亚航X实际上就是通过这样的自我联程从中受益匪浅。公司商务咨询专家克莱顿（Tim Claydon）表示在公司新开辟的吉隆坡——伦敦斯坦斯德Stansted航线上，90%以上旅客都不是点对点的。但是他同时认为低成本航空公司之间将不会建立起联盟；同时他认为Dohop的价值主张很有意味，“我们喜欢这个概念。比如我们刚刚进入英国市场，毕竟我们不像瑞安或是易捷航空公司那样有名，这可以建立起我们公司的品牌知名度。”

　　公司并没有在自己的网站中使用Dohop的技术。目前只有三家航空公司已经使用了Dohop的技术——爱尔兰快运航空、阿联酋航空和维珍航空。但是亚航X允许该公司在dohop.com网页中放入公司的航班计划，西于尔永松表示公司网页每月有超过500,000名消费者可在数以百计的航空公司之间获得联程的信息。Dohop.com只是建议行程安排，旅客想要订票则被引导到不同航空公司的网站或是第三方的网站。

　　对于低成本航空公司行业，Navitaire公司是迄今为止最大的订座系统提供商。公司总经理约翰·达布科斯基（John Dabkowski）认为代码共享协议之所以近几年发展缓慢主要是替代新方案的出现。但是他认为主要的驱动力是糟糕的业务环境对于代码共享技术的投资减少了，“目前我们发现许多采购流程都停止了。和一年前相比，我们并没有看到新客户的出现。”公司表示目前它将近45家客户中只有7家实施了代码共享，其中两家还是支线运营商。在2007年，Navitaire客户中一共有6家低成本航空公司手中持有代码共享协议，还有一些航空公司表示准备在2008年开始代码共享。由于技术方面的挑战让Navitaire的客户在代码共享方面也是经受挫折。达布科斯基表示许多低成本航空公司并没有预料到其中所涉及到的难度和时间问题。“这里面存在着很大的学习经验曲线，而且包含许多后台的流程。”

　　Navitaire的客户之一——Gol，一开始计划销售实时的代码共享，但是项目进度已经拖后两年了。公司表示：在2008年公司对系统平台进行了升级，从Open Skies到New Skies——这是Navitaire研发的新一代系统，在代码共享方面功能得到进一步提升。但是公司正在升级系统，因此很快就会销售代码共享合作伙伴的航班了。公司和法荷航已经签订了合作协议，后者已经开始销售Gol的航班了，但是Gol目前尚未能够开展类似的销售。今年年底的时候预计新系统升级完毕。“如今我们正在实施微调，能够让新系统更好运作。下一步就是能让我们开展双边代码共享。目前问题在于公司自身的预订系统。”Gol也是首先开展代码共享的低成本航空公司之一，2005年就和巴拿马的Copa航空公司签订了协议。那时由于公司的系统不支持传统的自由销售协议，因此和Copa所签订的协议集中在固定座位数销售。Gol一开始准备2007年10月引入New Skies系统，开展双边自由销售。但是Gol缺乏相应的技术，达布科斯基表示公司如今更多签订的是联运协议。

　　Gol如今一共签订了25家联运伙伴，2008年8月使用New Skies系统之后才将信息上网。达布科斯基表示在目前的经济环境下，一些客户认为联运协议更加实际些，能够更快实施，成本和代码共享相比更低廉，而且能够带来实质益处。

　　美国西南航空公司在代码共享方面也是推后了发展进程。从2005年就已经和ATA航空公司签订了代码共享协议，直到2008年4月后者停止了运营。它被迫将和加拿大WestJet航空公司之间的协议签署工作从2009年推后至2010年。公司负责规划、分销和市场营销的高级总监理查德·斯威特（Richard Sweet）表示这次推后签署主要是由于技术方面的原因，“对我们来说这是大项目，涉及到许多代码以及系统之间的依赖性。对我们来说是一个全新的世界。”他表示公司现有的订座系统功能问题不能处理外汇交易、护照信息和国际税收问题。对于和ATA的代码共享，美西南航空公司表示“对于消费者而言感觉不像典型的代码共享旅行经历。”但是斯威特保证和WestJet之间的合作应该不会走老路。

　　然而他表示“还有不计其数的工作需要完成”，公司的IT团队正在想方设法同时应对几个项目，也包括一些非代码共享项目，特别在目前经济衰退之际这些项目反而成为当务之急。尽管代码共享项目有些拖后，但是斯威特表示和WestJet以及墨西哥Volaris航空公司之间的代码共享项目依然会进行下去，只是他并没有透露具体完成时间。

　　斯威特表示西南航空公司如今正在和Sabre合作，这也是WestJet所选择的新订座系统供应商。WestJet如今使用的是Navitaire，但是改换门庭选择了代码共享功能更佳的Sabre系统。至于和Volaris代码共享项目，西南航空依然和Navitaire合作。Volaris的COO表示公司也正在从Open Skies升级到New Skies，但是也表示了考虑准备更换系统供应商的问题。“我们正在分析我们的选择范围。我们正在考虑Navitaire是否是一个好的选择。”

　　捷蓝航空公司也决定和Navitaire离婚，改投Sabre的怀抱中。公司负责网络规划的副总裁劳伦斯（Scott Laurence）表示Sabre能够提供双向自由销售代码共享。捷蓝和支线航空公司Cape Air签订了固定座位数的代码共享协议，以及和爱尔兰航空公司（Aer Lingus）签订了合作协议——但不是代码共享，只是让旅客在办理值机和行李转运方面有代码共享的体验。劳伦斯表示和Aer Lingus之间的合作“非常稳固”。“我认为Sabre能够提供我们新平台实施更多的传统型代码共享。新系统能够赋予我们代码共享功能。使用Open Skies，我们见到的是更多手工流程。”

　　但是达布科斯基提出了反对意见--公司已经投入巨资对Open Skies和New Skies开发更佳的代码共享功能，“我们丢失了捷蓝和WestJet两家主要客户。我们相信公司拥有支持他们业务的功能和特色，但是他们还是决定离开我们。”

　　克莱顿指出“在订座系统上有很多竞争，就功能方面向低成本航空公司可以面对许多选择，在价格方面也具有竞争力。”但是他表示亚航和亚航X依然计划使用Navitaire产品。另一家Navitaire代码共享客户是西班牙的Vueling航空公司也表示将继续使用公司产品。2009年7月它和Clickair完成了合并，和母公司之一伊比利亚航空公司签订了单向的自由销售式代码共享协议。Vueling CEO表示：“我们已经看见那些放弃Navitaire的航空公司已经发展成熟。我们并没有像那些承运人成熟，可能还无法使用更加复杂的功能。转向Sabre系统是复杂的流程。它需要专职队伍运营新系统。公司并不相信使用传统航空公司销售平台的真正低成本平台运营商是一种容易、成本高效的方式。”

　　维珍蓝航空公司也坚持使用Navitaire，今年年底的时候转向使用New Skies系统，公司表示新系统会让公司建立起不受数目限制的代码共享和联运合作伙伴。公司是第一家签订代码共享协议的低成本航空公司，早在2002年就和美联航签订了单向的固定座位数目的协议。维珍蓝航空公司表示和美联航之间的协议已经失效，如今和达美航空公司建立了更广泛的合作，包括双向的自由销售代码共享协议。同时维珍蓝航空公司和V Australia，以及另外两家姐妹公司——Pacific Blue 和维珍航空公司签订了合作协议，还和PNG 和澳大利亚的SkyWest航空公司签订有代码共享。

　　达布科斯基承认竞争越来越激烈，Navitaire所面临的最大挑战之一是克服“行业内存在的错误想法--我们没有代码共享功能。”但是他自信：尽管最近公司碰见了困难，今后越来越多的低成本航空公司将朝代码共享方向发展。达布科斯基表示：除了Volaris，Navitaire另外两家客户也正在准备代码共享工作，“我们看见代码共享和联运协议发展趋势并没有改变。”

　　实际上，一些低成本航空公司继续签订代码共享协议。哥伦比亚低成本航空公司——Aires表示公司计划一旦完成New Skies升级，公司就会开始代码共享。南非低成本航空公司Mango表示公司正在考虑和母公司南非航空公司签订代码共享协议，一些国外航空公司也正在联系该公司商谈有关代码共享问题。“目前我们正在考虑此事。这实际上是一种成本高效的虚拟网络扩展——代码共享是好方式。”

　　但是目前看样子更多的低成本航空公司担忧代码共享，至少是传统型代码共享，比如New Skies系统的使用者——Spirit航空公司有能力实施代码共享，但是公司表示：“总体而言，代码共享并不适用于我们的业务模式，魔鬼就在细节之中。”

　　希利表示AirTran拥有代码共享的技术，并且收到过来自国内外承运人的不计其数的代码共享提议。但是他表示“我们并没有收到过对我们合适的提议。” AirTran对于追从捷蓝和西南航空公司的做法不敢兴趣，因为他们的协议是传统型的而且成本过高。“对于低成本航空公司而言最主要的就是实际上必须拥有低成本。”克莱顿也同意这样的看法。他认为代码共享“可能成本非常高昂。”尽管亚航X并没有考虑和国外承运人签订代码共享，克莱顿表示公司正在考虑和亚航签订代码共享协议。因为这两家姐妹公司目前正在迁移到New Skies系统平台上，以及到吉隆坡新建的低成本候机楼中。在新候机楼里面建设有中转设施，只是目前尚未使用而已。“机会就在那里，新设施已经建设好了。从成本和收入角度看，机会就在那里。”

　　瑞安航空公司已经转用了New Skies平台，作为低成本的不懈追求者，公司不会签订代码共享。瑞安航空公司前任主席表示：“代码共享不合适我们，这要增加成本。”瑞安航空公司也反对类似Dohop这样的网站公布公司的航班计划。但是西于尔永松相信：瑞安会有一天意识到新的网络工具所带来的益处，是不容忽视的。“对于我来说为什么一些低成本航空公司不愿意建立连接性，这依然是个迷。这能提升预订座位数，让航班更满。对于低成本航空公司，里面存在着很大的发展潜力，他们也心知肚明。但是反对变革的阻力是自然而然的。”

开放赌权及自由行后访澳客量增逾3倍

中国新闻网 2009-11-27

　　据报道，澳门酒店旅业商会会长陈志杰指出，将有2.5-4万间客房2至5年内落成，澳门酒店业变化影响着亚洲以至全世界，竞争也加剧。

　　陈志杰介绍，在赌权开放和自由行两因素推动下，访澳旅客从1999年的744万人次增到去年的2290万人次，增3.28倍;酒店从业人员从6100多人升至去年底的3.1万人，是1999年的5.08倍。

　　投资额在20-30、50-80亿港元的大型娱乐酒店已形成聚群效应，成为澳门旅客高速增长的动力，且客源多元化初见成效。去年2300万访澳游客中，内地游客占49.16%，香港客和台湾客分别占31.44%和5.75%，国际游客占14.56%(总数达到300多万)。

　　今年澳门酒店客房将达2万间，增幅是2003年底9185间的1.18倍，同期旅客增幅仅为0.93倍，客房供应增长快于客量增幅。但2004年至今，平均入住率为75%，比1999至2003年的55-65%有所提高。

　　陈志杰承认澳门大部分酒店面对人力资源短缺、员工大量流失、人才断层等压力，2004至2007年大多数酒店员工流失率在30-40%。如何加强内部培训，培养后备骨干成为酒店首要之务。

欧盟：50%消费者在线购买旅游服务无法律保障

中国民用航空   2009-11-27

　　欧盟26日称，如果企业根据过时的法律倒闭，在线订购航班机票、旅馆房间和雇佣汽车的消费者有一半以上将有得不到赔偿的风险。

　　欧盟消费者事务专员Meglena Kuneva说，56%的旅行者使用互联网安排自己的旅行而不是依靠大街上的旅行社。

　　适应数字时代的保护措施已经相应地下降了。

　　欧盟主要针对所谓的“动态计划”。在这种计划中，人们把一些单独的服务作为一个单个的网站提供的捆绑的服务。消费者在购买这些服务时经常遇到问题，平均损失为600欧元(900美元)。相当于这个计划的平均成本的80%。

　　欧盟的声明称，在研究的17个国家中，这类问题每年造成10亿欧元的损失。

　　虽然欧盟包价旅行指令规定的一些原则涵盖了旅游经营者应该在手册中承诺什么，但是，欧盟现在要防止在线消费者当旅游公司破产的时候处于困境。

　　据欧盟委员会统计，在英国，度假航班上的不到50%的乘客可以根据这个指令得到保护，而这个比例在1997年是98%。

　　促使欧盟采取这个新举措的原因是最近几年XL航空公司、马德里航空公司、EU Jet和Sabena航空公司等一些航空公司破产导致数千游客进退两难或者身无分文滞留在国外。

交叉營銷(Cross Marketing)

wiki.mbalib.com

交叉營銷通過把時間，金錢、構想、活動或演示空間等資源整合，為任何企業，包括家庭式小企業、大企業或特許經營店提供一個低成本的渠道，去接觸更多的潛在客戶。交叉營銷已經成為企業開展合作的一項重要內容，甚至是併購得以發生的基穿交叉營銷也並非僅僅適用於大型企業，只要具備一定的條件，各種規模的企業都可以在一定範圍內開展交叉營銷 幫助企業在激烈的市場競爭中脫穎而出；保持銷售旺淡季現金流的平衡；激發人們更多購物的動機；費用相同或減少的情況下，能更頻繁地接觸更多潛在客戶；培養與客戶和社團間的信任。

交叉營銷的實質

與交叉營銷密切相關的一個概念是“交叉銷售”，交叉銷售（Cross-selling）通常是發現一位現有顧客的 多種需求，並通過滿足其需求而實現銷售多種相關的服務或產品的營銷方式。促成交叉銷售的各種策略和方法 即“交叉營銷”。交叉銷售在傳統的銀行業和保險業等領域的作用最為明顯，因為消費者在購買這些產品或服務時必須提交 真實的個人資料，這些數據一方面可以用來進一步分析顧客的需求（CRM中的數據挖掘就是典型的應用之一）， 作為市場調研的基礎，從而為顧客提供更多更好的服務，另一方面也可以在保護用戶個人隱私的前提下將這些 用戶資源與其他具有互補型的企業互為開展營銷。

可見，交叉營銷的實質是在擁有一定營銷資源的情況下向自己的顧客或者合作伙伴的顧客進行的一種推廣 手段，這種營銷方法最大的特點是充分利用現有資源，在兩個具有相關用戶需求特點的企業間開展交叉營銷， 能使各自的潛在用戶數量明顯增加而不需要額外的營銷費用，同時，以交叉營銷為基礎建立起良好的合作關係 對兩個（或多個）企業間的發展具有更多的戰略意義。

交叉營銷有兩大功能

企業在面臨客戶忠誠度和利潤的劇烈挑戰。如何在夾縫中求生存，選擇交叉營銷有兩大功能：

• 交叉營銷可以增強客戶忠誠度。數據顯示：購買兩種產品的客戶的流失率是55%，而擁有4個或更多產品或服務的流失率幾乎是0。

• 交叉營銷也可以增加利潤。實踐證明，將一種產品和服務推銷給一個現有客戶的成本遠低於吸收一個新客戶的成本。來自信用卡公司的數據顯示：平均說來，信用卡客戶要到第三年才能開始有利潤。由此可見，吸收新客戶的成本是非常高的，而對現有客戶進行交叉銷售，也自然成為許多公司增加投資回報的捷徑。

有效地進行交叉營銷

1.尋找產品

如何有效地進行交叉營銷？尋找合適的產品自然是第一步。目前有兩種方法：業務靈感和數據挖掘。有些時候，業務靈感可以告訴企業，哪些產品需要進行交叉銷售。業務靈感的確是一個快速確定交叉銷售產品的方法。但是，僅僅依賴業務靈感可能會喪失許多商機，因為在某些情況下，一些好的交叉銷售產品並不是直觀可見的。因此，如果要尋找那些潛在的交叉銷售商機，有一個最好用的工具――數據挖掘。鏈接分析是數據挖掘中的一種方法，它可以從歷史數據中找到產品和產品之間的相關關係，從而產生出最恰當的交叉銷售產品或服務。但是，鏈接分析的結果必須依賴業務知識來審核其準確性和價值，因此，在實際應用中，又常常將業務靈感和數據挖掘結合起來，以確定合適的交叉銷售產品。

2. 客戶分析

一旦確定了要推銷的產品，就必須進行客戶定位， 主要是瞭解不同產品之間同時或前後發生的購買關係，從而為交叉銷售提供有價值的建議。通常來講，如果具備客戶的產品購買信息，就可以應用鏈接分析的方法來瞭解產品和產品之間的相關程度，從而確定交叉銷售的對象。鏈接分析起源於零售業，它的一個典型例子就是啤酒和尿布的故事。數據挖掘人員通過對交易數據的分析，發現啤酒和尿布同時購買的相關程度很高。再經進一步的調查發現，原來是有孩子的父親在給自己購買啤酒時，也常會給自己剛出生不久的子女購買尿布。根據以上信息，超市人員便及時調整了物品的擺放結構，從而讓客戶的購買更加方便。目前，類似的數據挖掘技術也已在國外企業中廣泛使用，針對既有客戶推銷不同的產品和服務。應用分類模型對所有客戶購買該指定產品的可能性進行預測，從而發現誰最有可能購買該產品。

3.篩選預測

對篩選出來的客戶進行預測，可以選擇全部的潛在客戶進行交叉銷售，也可以採用數據挖掘中分類的方法進行評分，以便找出購買性大的客戶，從而進一步提高購買率。但是在有些情況下，我們可能不用去關心產品和產品之間的相關程度，而只需要從現有的客戶中找出最有可能購買某指定產品的客戶，並不限定這些客戶是什麼產品的客戶。對於這種情形，我們直接應用分類模型就可以了。對於指定產品A，我們將收集客戶在購買A之前的背景信息和其它產品的交易數據。對於購買A的客戶，可以將其賦值為1，而沒有買A的客戶，則可以將其賦值為0。運用科學、有效的市場細分標準和市場細分方法對所有客戶進行系統深入的市場細分。在對各個細分市場的增長潛力、競爭程度、資源要求等方面進行科學評估的基礎上選擇出明確的目標客戶群。

4.確定合作伙伴

企業總想以更少的精力和成本更頻繁地接觸更多潛在客戶，提供豐富的信息或優惠，以吸引人們購買產品或服務，就得尋找最能幫忙的合作伙伴。選擇合作伙伴時，應多考慮對方的信譽和他們服務的顧客群，而不是他們實際提供的產品或服務。最好的合作伙伴應具備下列特點：服務於相同的顧客群，但不存在競爭；伙伴企業中有相識的經理，有利於共事；服務企業想爭取的顧客；雙方的商業淡旺季互補，一方淡季時，另一方恰好是旺季，一方的客戶群至少同另一方現有的客戶群一樣大，擁有與對方不同的資源，包括高訪問量的網站，不同的細分市場等；雙方有可互相捆綁銷售的產品或服務；相兼容的價值觀念。與潛在合作伙伴接近時，先說明自己想探索一種新辦法，使他們以相同或更少的費用和時間接觸到更多顧客。然後自己試著描述一種打算嘗試的簡單方式，要清楚闡明交叉營銷的好處及責任。

5.效果評估

為了提高今後的交叉營銷方案設計質量和交叉營銷活動效果，在每一次組合營銷活動結束後應主要根據方案設計時所制定的交叉營銷效果評估的標準和方法及時地對交叉營銷活動進行效果評估和經驗總結

• 直接效果評價。如用戶數量、營銷ROI、交叉營銷收入、交叉營銷成本等。

• 間接效果評價。如交叉營銷活動對新用戶和老用戶之間的影響、交叉營銷活動對相關業務之間的影響、交叉營銷活動對客戶忠誠度的影響、交叉營銷活動對長期效益和企業形象的影響、交叉營銷活動對聯盟合作關係的影響、交叉營銷活動對競爭關係及競爭格局的影響等。

• 經驗與教訓總結。要認真分析和總結在交叉營銷目的、市場細分、目標客戶群特點分析、合作伙伴選擇、產品選擇、方案設計、實施過程式控制制等方面的經驗或教訓

交叉營銷的簡單運用

在收據上列印共同促銷的信息；如果顧客購買，提供降價、特別服務或便利服務；在雙方的場所和產品上懸掛對方產品的標誌或海報；在本地活動或接受媒體採訪時，要提及合作伙伴的優點；向顧客派送雙方的廣告宣傳單；收集郵件列表，向顧客發送共同促銷的明信片；一起接受地方媒體的採訪；鼓勵員工宣傳合作伙伴的產品能如何與你的產品並用；顧客大量購買時，向他們提供合作伙伴的產品，要求合作伙伴採取同樣做法；合辦店內活動或辦公室活動，比如產品演示和免費講座等。

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

By Chris Anderson02.25.08

At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work. He blamed the evils of market competition. Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.

One day, while he was shaving with a straight razor that was so worn it could no longer be sharpened, the idea came to him. What if the blade could be made of a thin metal strip? Rather than spending time maintaining the blades, men could simply discard them when they became dull. A few years of metallurgy experimentation later, the disposable-blade safety razor was born. But it didn't take off immediately. In its first year, 1903, Gillette sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Over the next two decades, he tried every marketing gimmick he could think of. He put his own face on the package, making him both legendary and, some people believed, fictional. He sold millions of razors to the Army at a steep discount, hoping the habits soldiers developed at war would carry over to peacetime. He sold razors in bulk to banks so they could give them away with new deposits ("shave and save" campaigns). Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee, tea, spices, and marshmallows. The freebies helped to sell those products, but the tactic helped Gillette even more. By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades. A few billion blades later, this business model is now the foundation of entire industries: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets.

Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of productsthemselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal. (The remaining fee-based parts, new owner Rupert Murdoch announced, will be "really special ... and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive." This calls to mind one version of Stewart Brand's original aphorism from 1984: "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive ... That tension will not go away.")

Scenario 1: Low-cost digital distribution will make the summer blockbuster free. Theaters will make their money from concessions — and by selling the premium moviegoing experience at a high price.

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

But tell that to the poor CIO who just shelled out six figures to buy another rack of servers. Technology sure doesn't feel free when you're buying it by the gross. Yet if you look at it from the other side of the fat pipe, the economics change. That expensive bank of hard drives (fixed costs) can serve tens of thousands of users (marginal costs). The Web is all about scale, finding ways to attract the most users for centralized resources, spreading those costs over larger and larger audiences as the technology gets more and more capable. It's not about the cost of the equipment in the racks at the data center; it's about what that equipment can do. And every year, like some sort of magic clockwork, it does more and more for less and less, bringing the marginal costs of technology in the units that we individuals consume closer to zero.

As much as we complain about how expensive things are getting, we're surrounded by forces that are making them cheaper. Forty years ago, the principal nutritional problem in America was hunger; now it's obesity, for which we have the Green Revolution to thank. Forty years ago, charity was dominated by clothing drives for the poor. Now you can get a T-shirt for less than the price of a cup of coffee, thanks to China and global sourcing. So too for toys, gadgets, and commodities of every sort. Even cocaine has pretty much never been cheaper (globalization works in mysterious ways).

Digital technology benefits from these dynamics and from something else even more powerful: the 20th-century shift from Newtonian to quantum machines. We're still just beginning to exploit atomic-scale effects in revolutionary new materials — semiconductors (processing power), ferromagnetic compounds (storage), and fiber optics (bandwidth). In the arc of history, all three substances are still new, and we have a lot to learn about them. We are just a few decades into the discovery of a new world.

What does this mean for the notion of free? Well, just take one example. Last year, Yahoo announced that Yahoo Mail, its free webmail service, would provide unlimited storage. Just in case that wasn't totally clear, that's "unlimited" as in "infinite." So the market price of online storage, at least for email, has now fallen to zero (see "Webmail Windfall"). And the stunning thing is that nobody was surprised; many had assumed infinite free storage was already the case.

For good reason: It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing.

One of the old jokes from the late-'90s bubble was that there are only two numbers on the Internet: infinity and zero. The first, at least as it applied to stock market valuations, proved false. But the second is alive and well. The Web has become the land of the free.

The result is that we now have not one but two trends driving the spread of free business models across the economy. The first is the extension of King Gillette's cross-subsidy to more and more industries. Technology is giving companies greater flexibility in how broadly they can define their markets, allowing them more freedom to give away products or services to one set of customers while selling to another set. Ryanair, for instance, has disrupted its industry by defining itself more as a full-service travel agency than a seller of airline seats (see "How Can Air Travel Be Free?").

The second trend is simply that anything that touches digital networks quickly feels the effect of falling costs. There's nothing new about technology's deflationary force, but what is new is the speed at which industries of all sorts are becoming digital businesses and thus able to exploit those economics. When Google turned advertising into a software application, a classic services business formerly based on human economics (things get more expensive each year) switched to software economics (things get cheaper). So, too, for everything from banking to gambling. The moment a company's primary expenses become things based in silicon, free becomes not just an option but the inevitable destination.

WASTE AND WASTE AGAIN
Forty years ago, Caltech professor Carver Mead identified the corollary to Moore's law of ever-increasing computing power. Every 18 months, Mead observed, the price of a transistor would halve. And so it did, going from tens of dollars in the 1960s to approximately 0.000001 cent today for each of the transistors in Intel's latest quad-core. This, Mead realized, meant that we should start to "waste" transistors.

Scenario 2: Ads on the subway? That's so 20th century. By sponsoring the whole line and making trips free, the local merchants association brings grateful commuters to neighborhood shops.

Waste is a dirty word, and that was especially true in the IT world of the 1970s. An entire generation of computer professionals had been taught that their job was to dole out expensive computer resources sparingly. In the glass-walled facilities of the mainframe era, these systems operators exercised their power by choosing whose programs should be allowed to run on the costly computing machines. Their role was to conserve transistors, and they not only decided what was worthy but also encouraged programmers to make the most economical use of their computer time. As a result, early developers devoted as much code as possible to running their core algorithms efficiently and gave little thought to user interface. This was the era of the command line, and the only conceivable reason someone might have wanted to use a computer at home was to organize recipe files. In fact, the world's first personal computer, a stylish kitchen appliance offered by Honeywell in 1969, came with integrated counter space.

And here was Mead, telling programmers to embrace waste. They scratched their heads — how do you waste computer power? It took Alan Kay, an engineer working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, to show them. Rather than conserve transistors for core processing functions, he developed a computer concept — the Dynabook — that would frivolously deploy silicon to do silly things: draw icons, windows, pointers, and even animations on the screen. The purpose of this profligate eye candy? Ease of use for regular folks, including children. Kay's work on the graphical user interface became the inspiration for the Xerox Alto, and then the Apple Macintosh, which changed the world by opening computing to the rest of us. (We, in turn, found no shortage of things to do with it; tellingly, organizing recipes was not high on the list.)

Of course, computers were not free then, and they are not free today. But what Mead and Kay understood was that the transistors in them — the atomic units of computation — would become so numerous that on an individual basis, they'd be close enough to costless that they might as well be free. That meant software writers, liberated from worrying about scarce computational resources like memory and CPU cycles, could become more and more ambitious, focusing on higher-order functions such as user interfaces and new markets such as entertainment. And that meant software of broader appeal, which brought in more users, who in turn found even more uses for computers. Thanks to that wasteful throwing of transistors against the wall, the world was changed.

What's interesting is that transistors (or storage, or bandwidth) don't have to be completely free to invoke this effect. At a certain point, they're cheap enough to be safely disregarded. The Greek philosopher Zeno wrestled with this concept in a slightly different context. In Zeno's dichotomy paradox, you run toward a wall. As you run, you halve the distance to the wall, then halve it again, and so on. But if you continue to subdivide space forever, how can you ever actually reach the wall? (The answer is that you can't: Once you're within a few nanometers, atomic repulsion forces become too strong for you to get any closer.)

In economics, the parallel is this: If the unitary cost of technology ("per megabyte" or "per megabit per second" or "per thousand floating-point operations per second") is halving every 18 months, when does it come close enough to zero to say that you've arrived and can safely round down to nothing? The answer: almost always sooner than you think.

What Mead understood is that a psychological switch should flip as things head toward zero. Even though they may never become entirely free, as the price drops there is great advantage to be had in treating them as if theywere free. Not too cheap to meter, as Atomic Energy Commission chief Lewis Strauss said in a different context, but too cheap to matter. Indeed, the history of technological innovation has been marked by people spotting such price and performance trends and getting ahead of them.

From the consumer's perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you're in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of "free" is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.

This difference between cheap and free is what venture capitalist Josh Kopelman calls the "penny gap." People think demand is elastic and that volume falls in a straight line as price rises, but the truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another. In many cases, that's the difference between a great market and none at all.

The huge psychological gap between "almost zero" and "zero" is why micropayments failed. It's why Google doesn't show up on your credit card. It's why modern Web companies don't charge their users anything. And it's why Yahoo gives away disk drive space. The question of infinite storage was not if but when. The winners made their stuff free first.

Traditionalists wring their hands about the "vaporization of value" and "demonetization" of entire industries. The success of craigslist's free listings, for instance, has hurt the newspaper classified ad business. But that lost newspaper revenue is certainly not ending up in the craigslist coffers. In 2006, the site earned an estimated $40 million from the few things it charges for. That's about 12 percent of the $326 million by which classified ad revenue declined that year.

But free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just because products are free doesn't mean that someone, somewhere, isn't making huge gobs of money. Google is the prime example of this. The monetary benefits of craigslist are enormous as well, but they're distributed among its tens of thousands of users rather than funneled straight to Craig Newmark Inc. To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties — buyers and sellers — to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash.

The most common of the economies built around free is the three-party system. Here a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties. Sound complicated? You're probably experiencing it right now. It's the basis of virtually all media.

In the traditional media model, a publisher provides a product free (or nearly free) to consumers, and advertisers pay to ride along. Radio is "free to air," and so is much of television. Likewise, newspaper and magazine publishers don't charge readers anything close to the actual cost of creating, printing, and distributing their products. They're not selling papers and magazines to readers, they're selling readers to advertisers. It's a three-way market.

In a sense, what the Web represents is the extension of the media business model to industries of all sorts. This is not simply the notion that advertising will pay for everything. There are dozens of ways that media companies make money around free content, from selling information about consumers to brand licensing, "value-added" subscriptions, and direct ecommerce (see How-To Wiki for a complete list). Now an entire ecosystem of Web companies is growing up around the same set of models.

A TAXONOMY OF FREE
Between new ways companies have found to subsidize products and the falling cost of doing business in a digital age, the opportunities to adopt a free business model of some sort have never been greater. But which one? And how many are there? Probably hundreds, but the priceless economy can be broken down into six broad categories:

· "Freemium"
What's free: Web software and services, some content. Free to whom: users of the basic version.

This term, coined by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, is the basis of the subscription model of media and is one of the most common Web business models. It can take a range of forms: varying tiers of content, from free to expensive, or a premium "pro" version of some site or software with more features than the free version (think Flickr and the $25-a-year Flickr Pro).

Again, this sounds familiar. Isn't it just the free sample model found everywhere from perfume counters to street corners? Yes, but with a pretty significant twist. The traditional free sample is the promotional candy bar handout or the diapers mailed to a new mother. Since these samples have real costs, the manufacturer gives away only a tiny quantity — hoping to hook consumers and stimulate demand for many more.

But for digital products, this ratio of free to paid is reversed. A typical online site follows the 1 Percent Rule — 1 percent of users support all the rest. In the freemium model, that means for every user who pays for the premium version of the site, 99 others get the basic free version. The reason this works is that the cost of serving the 99 percent is close enough to zero to call it nothing.

· Advertising

What's free: content, services, software, and more. Free to whom: everyone.

Broadcast commercials and print display ads have given way to a blizzard of new Web-based ad formats: Yahoo's pay-per-pageview banners, Google's pay-per-click text ads, Amazon's pay-per-transaction "affiliate ads," and site sponsorships were just the start. Then came the next wave: paid inclusion in search results, paid listing in information services, and lead generation, where a third party pays for the names of people interested in a certain subject. Now companies are trying everything from product placement (PayPerPost) to pay-per-connection on social networks like Facebook. All of these approaches are based on the principle that free offerings build audiences with distinct interests and expressed needs that advertisers will pay to reach.

· Cross-subsidies 
What's free: any product that entices you to pay for something else. Free to whom: everyone willing to pay eventually, one way or another.

Scenario 3: It's a free second-gen Wiii! But only if you buy the deluxe version of Rock Band.

When Wal-Mart charges $15 for a new hit DVD, it's a loss leader. The company is offering the DVD below cost to lure you into the store, where it hopes to sell you a washing machine at a profit. Expensive wine subsidizes food in a restaurant, and the original "free lunch" was a gratis meal for anyone who ordered at least one beer in San Francisco saloons in the late 1800s. In any package of products and services, from banking to mobile calling plans, the price of each individual component is often determined by psychology, not cost. Your cell phone company may not make money on your monthly minutes — it keeps that fee low because it knows that's the first thing you look at when picking a carrier — but your monthly voicemail fee is pure profit.

On a busy corner in São Paulo, Brazil, street vendors pitch the latest "tecnobrega" CDs, including one by a hot band called Banda Calypso. Like CDs from most street vendors, these did not come from a record label. But neither are they illicit. They came directly from the band. Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That's OK, because selling discs isn't Calypso's main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet.

The vendors generate literal street cred in each town Calypso visits, and its omnipresence in the urban soundscape means that it gets huge crowds to its rave/dj/concert events. Free music is just publicity for a far more lucrative tour business. Nobody thinks of this as piracy.

· Zero marginal cost
What's free: things that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone. Free to whom: everyone.

This describes nothing so well as online music. Between digital reproduction and peer-to-peer distribution, the real cost of distributing music has truly hit bottom. This is a case where the product has become free because of sheer economic gravity, with or without a business model. That force is so powerful that laws, guilt trips, DRM, and every other barrier to piracy the labels can think of have failed. Some artists give away their music online as a way of marketing concerts, merchandise, licensing, and other paid fare. But others have simply accepted that, for them, music is not a moneymaking business. It's something they do for other reasons, from fun to creative expression. Which, of course, has always been true for most musicians anyway.

· Labor exchange
What's free: Web sites and services. Free to whom: all users, since the act of using these sites and services actually creates something of value.

You can get free porn if you solve a few captchas, those scrambled text boxes used to block bots. What you're actually doing is giving answers to a bot used by spammers to gain access to other sites — which is worth more to them than the bandwidth you'll consume browsing images. Likewise for rating stories on Digg, voting on Yahoo Answers, or using Google's 411 service (see "How Can Directory Assistance Be Free?"). In each case, the act of using the service creates something of value, either improving the service itself or creating information that can be useful somewhere else.

· Gift economy
What's free: the whole enchilada, be it open source software or user-generated content. Free to whom: everyone.

From Freecycle (free secondhand goods for anyone who will take them away) to Wikipedia, we are discovering that money isn't the only motivator. Altruism has always existed, but the Web gives it a platform where the actions of individuals can have global impact. In a sense, zero-cost distribution has turned sharing into an industry. In the monetary economy it all looks free — indeed, in the monetary economy it looks like unfair competition — but that says more about our shortsighted ways of measuring value than it does about the worth of what's created.

THE ECONOMICS OF ABUNDANCE 
Enabled by the miracle of abundance, digital economics has turned traditional economics upside down. Read your college textbook and it's likely to define economics as "the social science of choice under scarcity." The entire field is built on studying trade-offs and how they're made. Milton Friedman himself reminded us time and time again that "there's no such thing as a free lunch.

"But Friedman was wrong in two ways. First, a free lunch doesn't necessarily mean the food is being given away or that you'll pay for it later — it could just mean someone else is picking up the tab. Second, in the digital realm, as we've seen, the main feedstocks of the information economy — storage, processing power, and bandwidth — are getting cheaper by the day. Two of the main scarcity functions of traditional economics — the marginal costs of manufacturing and distribution — are rushing headlong to zip. It's as if the restaurant suddenly didn't have to pay any food or labor costs for that lunch.

Surely economics has something to say about that?

It does. The word is externalities, a concept that holds that money is not the only scarcity in the world. Chief among the others are your time and respect, two factors that we've always known about but have only recently been able to measure properly. The "attention economy" and "reputation economy" are too fuzzy to merit an academic department, but there's something real at the heart of both. Thanks to Google, we now have a handy way to convert from reputation (PageRank) to attention (traffic) to money (ads). Anything you can consistently convert to cash is a form of currency itself, and Google plays the role of central banker for these new economies.

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

FREE CHANGES EVERYTHING
Between digital economics and the wholesale embrace of King's Gillette's experiment in price shifting, we are entering an era when free will be seen as the norm, not an anomaly. How big a deal is that? Well, consider this analogy: In 1954, at the dawn of nuclear power, Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, promised that we were entering an age when electricity would be "too cheap to meter." Needless to say, that didn't happen, mostly because the risks of nuclear energy hugely increased its costs. But what if he'd been right? What if electricity had in fact become virtually free?The answer is that everything electricity touched — which is to say just about everything — would have been transformed. Rather than balance electricity against other energy sources, we'd use electricity for as many things as we could — we'd waste it, in fact, because it would be too cheap to worry about.

All buildings would be electrically heated, never mind the thermal conversion rate. We'd all be driving electric cars (free electricity would be incentive enough to develop the efficient battery technology to store it). Massive desalination plants would turn seawater into all the freshwater anyone could want, irrigating vast inland swaths and turning deserts into fertile acres, many of them making biofuels as a cheaper store of energy than batteries. Relative to free electrons, fossil fuels would be seen as ludicrously expensive and dirty, and so carbon emissions would plummet. The phrase "global warming" would have never entered the language.

Today it's digital technologies, not electricity, that have become too cheap to meter. It took decades to shake off the assumption that computing was supposed to be rationed for the few, and we're only now starting to liberate bandwidth and storage from the same poverty of imagination. But a generation raised on the free Web is coming of age, and they will find entirely new ways to embrace waste, transforming the world in the process. Because free is what you want — and free, increasingly, is what you're going to get.

(http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free)

是否免费？定价问题已经颠覆了某些行业的游戏规则

http://finance.QQ.com　 2009年04月02日

不论是在互联网还是其他地方，免费赠送产品（譬如Adobe Reader和在线新闻）俨然已成为一种合理的业务模式。沃顿商学院教授等人认为，一旦公司突破传统思维，接受不一定要根据成本定价的观念，新的机会就会涌现出来，即便是非数字产品亦是如此。欢迎进入“免费经济”时代。

有则关于免费产品的老笑话是这样的：顾客问一个免费派送产品的商人，“你这样怎么能赚钱呢？”商人回答道，“我赚的是人气。”

是的，这种做法听起来并不靠谱。但有趣的事情发生了：不论是在互联网还是其他地方，赠送产品俨然已成为一种合法的业务模式，而且越来越引起人们的关注。前《经济学人》（The Economist）记者、《连线》（Wired）总编辑克里斯·安德森（Chris Anderson）去年发表过一篇封面文章，题为“免费！商业的未来”（Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business）。这篇文章也是他为自己将于今年7月出版的新书《免费午餐的前世与未来》（Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price）所写的预告。克里斯也是《长尾理论》（The Long Tail）的作者，他在书中指出：亚马逊（Amazon.com）和Netflix等公司业务得以红火的秘诀就是他们都提供海量的产品，但每种产品的售量都很小。现在这些公司已成为经济衰退浪潮中为数不多的幸运儿之一。

提出“免费经济学”理论的并不只有安德森一人。广和投资（Union Square Ventures）的风险投资家弗雷德·威尔森（Fred Wilson）率先以“免费+收费模式”（freemium）来描述一种新兴的业务模式，即靠提供免费服务来积聚人气，然后再推出增值的收费服务，以此获得盈利。这种模式在网络服务公司和软件公司中非常普遍。

即使不准备免费奉送产品的公司，假如能够理解“免费经济学”背后的道理，对过去收费产品和服务的模式进行重新设计，他们也能从中获益。技术专家杰夫·贾维斯（Jeff Jarvis）在他的新书《谷歌的秘诀》（What Would Google Do）中提出，汽车公司能否找到一种赚钱的“免费”模式？汽车厂商能否借鉴谷歌的商业模式，免费发放依靠广告收入的汽车呢？沃顿法学与商业道德教授凯文·韦巴赫（Kevin Werbach）指出，一旦公司突破传统思维，接受价格并非完全取决于产品成本的观念，新的机遇就会涌现出来，即便非网络产品亦是如此。他说，“汽油完全可以免费，然后由开车的人每年付年费。同样的，汽车也可以免费，然后开车的人付汽油服务费即可。这两种模式现在市场上都还没有，但为什么不尝试一下呢？”

韦巴赫指出，有一家名为“好地方”（Better Place）的新兴电动汽车公司正在考虑以低价出售汽车，然后再靠新型电池赚钱的模式，就像打印机公司出售低价打印机，再高价出售墨盒一样。他说，“人们认为这样做很冒险，但假如说汽车只是一整套服务中的一部份，为什么就不能设法把价格摊开来呢？”

但这种做法究竟新鲜在哪里呢？“免费”的概念自“商业兴起之后”就已经出现了，沃顿营销学张忠教授（Z. John Zhang）质疑道。他曾经写过关于定价策略的著作。他说，“你到超市去购物，得到免费的样品，结果你买了一大箱子产品回去。有些酒吧是女士免费，然后让同行的男士买单。‘免费’是营销学理论中最强大的字眼。这种方式确实可以激发人们的购买欲。看到‘免费’的东西，即使你本来不感兴趣，你也会去拿。营销人士会利用一切机会使用这个字眼。”

需求曲线的背后

事实上“免费”的诱惑是如此强大，以至于压垮了需求曲线。研究定价与技术的沃顿运营及信息管理教授卡提克·霍桑纳格（Kartik Hosanagar）说，“有两种情况，一种是商品完全免费，一种是不免费但定价很低，对前者的需求就比对后者要大得多。”Half.com创始人、风险投资家乔希· 科佩尔曼（Josh Kopelman）把这种现象称为“一分钱的差别”（the penny gap）。他说，“只要是免费，消费者的需求就会突然直线上升。相反哪怕只收一分钱，需求也会大幅下降。”

所以很多公司都在想方设法推出“免费”产品也就不足为奇了。沃顿营销学教授斯蒂芬·霍希（Stephen J. Hoch）说，“化妆品就从来不打折，都是‘买正价商品送免费小样。’这样就可以维持正常的价格。”Adobe允许用户免费使用自己的Adobe Reader 软件，以PDF电子文档格式显示文件，但向需要安装Adobe Acrobat来制作文件的公司收费。“如果两者都收费，那这款软件就没办法畅销。”

当然免费产品和服务并非真的免费；只不过是以其他方式来收费罢了。交叉收费是流传已久的销售战略，最经典的案例就是吉列剃须刀，早在一个世纪前吉列就开始低价出售剃须刀，吸引顾客购买高价的替换刀片。后来过了很长时间打印机公司才开始采取类似的策略，廉价出售打印机，吸引顾客购买高价墨盒。

所以市场有两面，每面吸引不同的顾客。张教授说，“哪一面的价格弹性小[对价格变化不是很敏感]，这一面就是你可以收更高费用的目标。”譬如“女士免费”酒吧，因为女士入场可以吸引更多的男士，而男士对价格的敏感程度小，入场券的价格高低对他们的影响不大。

过去读者订阅报纸要付费，在报纸上刊登广告的广告商也要付费。现在有些报纸杂志已经对读者免费，出版的成本则靠广告来支撑。但由于免费在线内容随处可见，读者的需求波动十分强烈，即只要收取任何一点费用读者都会非常敏感，于是许多出版商都在尝试着纠正这种免费模式，包括采用交叉销售，譬如《华尔街日报》（The Wall Street Journal）现在就在wsjwine.com上向读者销售葡萄酒。

最新的趋势，当然是互联网。因特网的崛起使得某些新产品的发行边际成本几乎降至零。安德森在二月份的《华尔街日报》上撰文指出，“无论是音乐还是维基百科，数码产品制作和发行的边际成本实际可以为零，从而把恶性价格战推向了顶峰。”除了更容易找到廉价的产品和材料外，互联网的崛起还意味着可以拥有无数获得免费产品的机遇。

除了可以将发行成本降至最低外，互联网还滋生出其他一些明显的趋势，推动价格和消费者期望趋近于零。两面性市场在网上表现得更为成熟。谷歌通过提供免费的在线搜索，把广告商和用户的搜索期望值匹配起来：譬如搜索汽车，用户就会看到汽车广告。霍桑纳格说，“以前这种交易无法实现，因为把某个广告商和客户匹配起来的成本太高。”谷歌、雅虎和Facebook等在线公司正是利用互联网的机遇，利用“免费”大餐来吸引用户，希望将来获得回报，哪怕广告或其他来源的收入不能抵消免费服务的成本也没关系。

促使这些公司推出免费服务的还有其他原因。在网上开个小店、建个信息网站或博客所需的资金很少，而传统的公司则需要承担不菲的固定成本和店铺投资。门槛低也是催生《商业周刊》（Business Week）所称的“免费经济”（free-labor economy）的因素之一。人们只需花上一些时间就能建立起完善的，可能也很实用的网站。与此同时，数字技术的普及也使得版权内容的复制非常简单，包括音乐、电影、图片和新的文章等等，而这些是或者说过去是传统行业的产品。这一切也改变了消费者的期望。“免费文化”正在人们的生活中崛起，即有很多东西人们觉得不付钱就享受是理所当然的。迫于生存压力，深受伤害的传统行业不得不应对免费文化的挑战，而这些提供免费产品的公司有些就是想方设法获得投资，然后再拿钱来赚吆喝，即使不赚钱也不介意，而这使得某些传统行业深受其害。

消费者对于免费网络内容认为是天经地义的态度，“产生了始料未及的灾难性后果，并且以极快的速度释放出巨大的影响，超出任何人的想象。对新闻制作、对音乐制作的灾难性的影响仍在持续。显然依靠人气来拉动销售的概念是错误的，因为结果是无法拉动。2001年以来美国音乐唱片的销售额从130亿美元缩水至70亿美元，而同期合法数字下载的销售额达到15亿美元。”

受免费在线文化的影响，再加上产品（制作成本高但易于复制粘贴）能轻易地被博客到处转载，受困于高额固定成本和发行成本的报纸杂志遭受到沉重打击。多数报纸杂志也尝试过提供免费内容，但仅靠在线广告收入无法负担其高昂的固定成本。沃尔特·艾萨克森（Walter Isaacson）一直为报纸杂志撰稿，他在二月份的《时代》（Times）周刊发表题为“如何拯救报纸”（How to Save Your Newspaper）的封面文章，对“免费经济”现象进行了直白的剖析。他在文章中写道，“这种业务模式没有存在的理由。”他建议报纸想办法保护自己的知识产权，并向阅读内容的读者收取费用。

张教授对此观点表示同意。他说，“现在传统报纸的做法是试图公平竞争，为此不惜降低自己的质量。他们应该向高端发展，发挥自己的优势和特征。”艾萨克森建议建立一种系统，使得读者可以很方便地为在线内容支付“小额费用”。但这是说来容易做来难。艾萨克森等人提议的这种系统以往的尝试效果不佳，主要因为“一分钱的差距”心理很难克服，再加上人们都知道网上有大量的免费新闻可以阅读。霍希说，“我们最不愿意看到的就是让人们对免费的东西上瘾。假如你要提供免费服务，你就得做好永远免费的心理准备。假如你要低价出售，你就必须降低成本。”

免费软件代替人的工作

免费在线文化效应对传统业务造成了严重的影响，很多以前由人来完成的工作现在都可以用软件来做。安德森说，“以前那个爱发脾气的税务会计变成了免费的在线软件TurboTax，股票经纪人被交易网站取而代之，你也不再需要旅行社，只要有个完美的搜索引擎就可以搞定一切。”

谷歌利用在线搜索广告的收入来补贴其他免费的在线软件，让那些提供类似产品但已经习惯收费的竞争对手惊慌失措。微软的办公软件动辄要数百美元，而谷歌推出的整套办公软件（文字处理、工作表等）却是完全免费的。于是微软不得不承诺将来会推出免费的在线版办公软件。韦巴赫说，“将来很有可能我们不用再花很多钱在系统上。”这对于那些有工资等固定成本的公司而言这可不是什么好消息。

企业也在纷纷尝试各种各样的定价策略。有些寄望于“免费+收费”模式，免费推出产品的基本版，但高级功能需要收费。雅虎让成千上万的幻想球员每个赛季免费参与在线联盟，然后再诱惑他们为对局统计或球员侦查报告付费。在每个报税季，H&R Block和Intuit等公司都会提供免费的基本在线税务计算服务以及电子文档，但需要更加高级的服务则必须付费。困扰报刊网站的问题是决定哪些内容可以免费，哪些内容读者必须付费才能阅读。

有些公司的做法非常新颖。2007年，摇滚乐队“电台司令”（Radiohead）在网上发行专辑“彩虹里”（In Rainbows），允许歌迷自主选择下载的价钱。市场调查公司ConmScore的调研估计，38%的歌迷以6美元的均价下载了这张专辑。后来该专辑的实际CD销量超过了乐队发行的前两张CD。

张教授说，“企业必须根据新技术调整自己的收入模式。”不是人人都有能力与免费文化竞争，但还是可以尝试一些新颖的战略。

韦巴赫说，“现在的问题是很多人都觉得业务模式是永恒不变的。但业务模式并不是静止的，尤其在今天更不是一成不变的。互联网的兴起使得改变某些行业的利润分配成为轻而易举的事情。经历这种改革确实不易，但这就是生活。只有积极参与这种变革的公司才能取得成功。”（沃顿知识在线）