A major barrier to widespread use of home energy management systems, like smart thermostats, has been the challenge of getting consumers to pay the price tag. These systems can cost $300 or more. One solution has been to get communications carriers, demand response providers, or utilities to pay for or subsidize them.
How about another approach? Make them into sexy status symbols that people can’t wait to get their hands on.
Truman Semans at GreenBiz.com had this to share after returning from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) annual meeting in mid-June.
“Most industry pilot programs and academic research show that...people's interest in home energy management drops off sharply after even a month.”
Even though a recent J.D. Power and Associates survey shows that 52% of television customers report they still watch programs as they are broadcast, some 3% of subscription TV consumers are cutting the cord from their service provider entirely. The survey goes on to point out that some 6% of the important young adults, age 17-34 TV audience say they no longer subscribe to a residential TV service. They are shifting their viewing habits online to services like Netflix, Google TV, Hulu and Apple TV, They are using their laptops, tablets and mobile devices to view the shows and videos they want to watch.
The upside for the networks? More and more consumers are turning to social networks to share their TV-viewing experiences, and the TV networks have recognized this as a way to build engagement with them. They’ve even used social media as a way to promote live viewing. Check out this report from eMarketer, “Socializing the TV Experience” Click Here
You might know that at KSV we’re all about listening. Listening to customers,
listening to the competition, listening to a swinging jazz set, you name it. But mostly,
listening to customers.
With the pervasive mood of belt-tightening in an economy that hasn’t seen sustained good news for a long time, there’s a growing demand in industrial cities for energy efficiency infrastructure and initiatives.
One program that may serve as a great model for such is the Clean Energy Coalition, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and led by executive director and entrepreneur Sean Reed.
Accenture’s survey, Revealing the Values of the New Energy Consumer, offers four critical implications for utilities and electricity providers in the new energy marketplace.
1. Mine the data. Use analytics to make sense of diverse customer preferences, and then target groups with tailored value propositions and solutions. Data, along with the ability to manage and analyze it, may become the new core of competitive differentiation. It’s not just how many customers you have – it’s how well you know them.
