The data portability provisions of the new European Data Protection Regulations have the potential to turn data relationships between customers and companies upside down as customers learn to move their data to those providers adding most value to it from the customer’s point of view. Companies need to look at customer data through a new lens: the value it can generate for customers as well as the company.

The Call for Papers of this Special Issue introduced its theme by saying that: ‘Increasing consumer power, accelerated by the meteoric rise of social media, threatens the foundations of branding’. This article examines the intellectual and operational conditions that created modern theories of marketing and branding to show that developments such as increasing consumer empowerment are not a threat to the foundations of branding. They are a threat to the foundations of an outdated and incoherent theory of branding: the persuasion paradigm, defined broadly here as the quest for the skills needed to ‘make the customer do what suits the interests of the business’. The article shows how, far from helping build brands, the persuasion paradigm has led marketers to misallocate resources, undermine customer trust and fail to recognise far-reaching changes in the marketing environment – especially the rise of a new and separate market for decision-support services; the market for ‘better decisions’ as well as ‘better products and services’. By discarding the persuasion paradigm and reorienting brands as information services, marketers can regain the high ground of consumer trust and value.

Sometimes assumptions run so deep that they are rarely even discussed, never mind questioned or challenged. Direct marketing has one such assumption: that it is the organization alone that collects, analyses and uses 'customer' data. The organization is the data manager; the customer is the subject and target of data-driven activities. Now, however, the UK Government initiative 'midata' — soon to be backed by European law — is encouraging companies to release the data they hold on customers back to the customer, thereby empowering them as managers of their own data. Midata heralds a new era of digital data sharing between individuals and their suppliers. By helping consumers manage and control their own data, direct marketers' dream of helpful, useful, timely, relevant communications may be realized — via a route early pioneers of the discipline never conceived of.

One of the great marketing researchers, Professor Andrew Ehrenberg, died last August. International Commerce Review sees its job as bringing the freshest, latest ground-breaking research directly to the attention of leading industry practitioners. So why publish an article about research from a man who is dead, and whose work spans nearly half a century? Because, if his findings stand, many companies – perhaps most – are still wasting millions of euros, dollars and pounds pursuing strategies that can never work. Professor Ehrenberg’s work still needs further airing and debate.

“You’re only successful when you create value for the consumer.” That belief underpins Nestlé’s approach to business. And it is at the root of the new Consumer Goods Forum’s thinking.

Xavier Hua is the new Managing Director of ECR Europe. He was previously head of supply with Orange-France Telecom, as well as responsible for supply chain and strategy with Carrefour. He is also General Manager of ECR France. What are his plans for the role?

Who are companies for? Are they just for one group of people, such as shareholders, or do they earn their legitimacy by serving many different groups of people at the same time?

As a “lifestyle concierge service”, Ten Group’s approach to business is worlds apart from that currently inhabited by consumer goods manufacturers and retailers. Can we learn anything from it?

Find the secret to improve the quality of life by reading this taking responsibility. This is a kind of book that you need now. Besides, it can be your favorite book to read after having this book. Do you ask why? Well, this is a book that has different characteristic with others. You may not need to know who the author is, how well-known the work is. As wise word, never judge the words from who speaks, but make the words as your good value to your life.

These words summarize the context of thisissue. The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)is now the largest consumer goodsorganization in the world. Its reach andinclusiveness are truly breathtaking, andif it can help all of its members to worktogether more effectively, it can makea big contribution to solving the manyglobal challenges we face.

In its history, marketing has only had two forms of information to play with: market research (which is primarily qualitative and/or statistical), and transaction/interaction data (which are granular and personally identifiable). When transaction data first appeared on the scene around 50 years ago, they sent shockwaves through marketing as new insights and possibilities opened up. Direct and database marketing, customer relationship management and loyalty schemes are some of its progeny. Now a third form of market information — Volunteered Personal Information — is entering the fray. Its impact could be as or even more far reaching than the transaction data revolution that came before it.

The birth of The Consumer Goods Forummarks the beginning of a new era ofcooperation between retailers and suppliersacross the world to collectively address themajor challenges facing our industry andsociety across the globe. The contributionof the International Commerce Review isto ask the leading voices in the industry toarticulate these new challenges, mobilisethe best brains in the academic world to helpdevelop answers to them, and report onpioneering success stories.

The reliability of Nuon 's electricity grid is for an important extent determined by the quality of the medium voltage (MV) grids. Simple solutions can make a great improvement in the quality of these grids at comparative low costs. Solutions to improve the quality are not only found in the primary system. An important contribution can also be delivered by the modern control and protection (C&P) installation and the information support to, for instance, grid operators and asset managers. It's a total philosophy. Since a few years Nuon is working with the slogan 'sense and simplicity' to improve the quality of the MV grids. Sense and simplicity means: everything what is not there doesn't fail, costs no money and needs no service. The most reliable component is the component which is not installed.

Direct marketing is now faced with endemic crisis. Toxic ingredients of this crisis include rising consumer concerns about privacy and data protection, growing hostility and resistance to unwanted messaging, rising costs, falling returns, increasing concerns about environmental impact, and intensifying regulatory scrutiny and restrictions. Three core characteristics of direct marketing are responsible for these problems; (1) Data management: all responsibility for data management (collection, storage, analysis, usage, etc) lies with the seller; (2) Information flows are almost wholly ‘top down’ from sellers to buyers in the form of selling messages; (3) Metrics: success is defined in seller-centric terms — costs versus benefits to the seller. By empowering individuals to collect, store and share rich, up-to-date personal data with suppliers, vendor relationship management (VRM) offers a way through direct marketing's current impasse. To realise the new win-wins made possible by VRM, the industry needs to start adjusting now.

How rapidly things change! Just a few months ago most businesses were making plans on the assumption of continued robust prosperity. But the world’s financial crisis has made mincemeat of all that. Recession looms, you can almost hear the sound of people battening down the hatches, withdrawing their horns and preparing for the worst rather than the best.

A different – consumer – perspective on measures of marketing effectiveness and accountability points to a new marketing research agenda.