Two firms that have both reoriented themselves over the last year, Jupiter and Yankee, are developing similarly deep focus on online, business-to-consumer, technologies. It’s less of an evolution for Jupiter (whose announced name-change from Jupiter Research to JupiterKagan seems to have not appeared) than for telecoms-specialist Yankee. That business now focuses on “anywhere” business, where businesses and consumers are connected by a network.
I now say that that Jupiter faces Yankee as one of its most direct competitors: I would not say the inverse, because Yankee’s most direct competitors are firms like Ovum and Analysys. (Similarly, if my uncle makes furniture his major competitor is Ikea, however Ikea will be see him as a competitor).
I’d say that Jupiter and Yankee’s common approach is defined by four features:
- – a focus on online business
- – an emphasis on business-to-consumer markets
- – strong services for vendors
- – data-driven by consumer research.
Taken together, I think that these are two sizable firms out of very few with such a level of focus in that online consumer business niche (Forrester would be another, but its focus on online business is less central to its business). Yankee has taken a sharp turn to broaden itself from telecoms to “anywhere”. Its has a major, strategic, orientation towards business to consumer interactions over networks, and its volume of online research is becoming substantial. It also conducts large-scale attitude surveys of consumers.
Of course there are several firms looking at online consumers seriously, including Datamonitor, eMarketer and IDC. However, they are not all of any real scale, and few are using a similar large-scale research approach to Jupiter, Yankee or Forrester.
This deepening focus on B2C ecommerce shows the maturity and stability of the sector. However, will other firms be able to overtake the lead that Jupiter and Yankee are establishing?
