The recent announcement from Samsung that its 2022 line of Smart TVs now have the capability for owners to cloud game on various services, including Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, represents a new stage in the development of cloud gaming as a mainstream consumer offering.

It’s been clear for a long time that gaming and tech companies view cloud gaming as a long-term revenue creator. Sony first launched their cloud gaming platform PlayStation Now in 2014, with Xbox Game Pass launching in 2017.

Ever since reporting an overall subscriber decline for the first time in ten years—a 210k fall— in April, the streaming giant’s fortunes radically changed.

The streaming giant predicted much worse fortunes for the second quarter. In their Q1 shareholder letter, a forecast of 2 million subscribers lost was made. As it was, Netflix reported a total subscriber decline of 970,000, beating their own estimate and buoying investors.

Many companies had e-commerce facilities before the pandemic, but they often produced only a small portion of their sales. As pandemic-shuttered consumers turned to online shopping in exploding numbers, and more companies turned to third-party fulfillment partners, the issues with e-commerce became exponentially apparent. E-commerce is a complex fulfillment system which can encompass warehousing, search, selection, payment, delivery, and returning of goods. Issues in this multi-channel customer experience (CX) can and do arise as the service relays with third parties occur. Brands need to understand the end-to-end customer journey, including the various touchpoints, and any gaps or customer pain points that detract from a satisfying experience. It’s not enough to offer online ordering. That experience must be seamless to foster loyalty and repeat business. With third-party providers, brands cannot control the CX which erodes their equity.

With the recent explosion in buy now pay later (BNPL) products, many financial institutions have entered this high-growth, pre-regulation market. Millions of consumers have embraced these services to spread the cost of their online shopping.

Maru conducted a survey of U.K. consumers of these products polling members of Maru’s Voice UK online panel. The results make the case for bringing in immediate regulations to protect vulnerable consumers from a growing and unmanageable debt gap they will be increasingly challenged to repay—avoiding a repeat of the payday lending crises of 2018.

With the recent explosion in buy now pay later (BNPL) products, many financial institutions have entered this high-growth, pre-regulation market. Millions of consumers have embraced these services to spread the cost of their online shopping.

Maru conducted a survey of U.K. consumers of these products polling members of Maru’s Voice UK online panel. The results make the case for bringing in immediate regulations to protect vulnerable consumers from a growing and unmanageable debt gap they will be increasingly challenged to repay—avoiding a repeat of the payday lending crises of 2018.

With the recent explosion in buy now pay later (BNPL) products, many financial institutions have entered this high-growth, pre-regulation market. Millions of consumers have embraced these services to spread the cost of their online shopping.

Maru conducted a survey of U.K. consumers of these products polling members of Maru’s Voice UK online panel. The results make the case for bringing in immediate regulations to protect vulnerable consumers from a growing and unmanageable debt gap they will be increasingly challenged to repay—avoiding a repeat of the payday lending crises of 2018.

The latest data on vaccination rates suggests that slightly less than two-thrids of all Americans are fully vaccinated, and another 12% are partly vaccinated. However, there remains a not insignificant portion of the population who are unyielding in their refusal to get vaccinated. Even the massive disparity between unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals in COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths and the recent emergence of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant has done little to influence this “no-vax” mindset among un-vaccinated individuals.

How do you engage customers in a low-engagement, highly regulated industry? How do you get them to adopt sustainability practices that are better for both them and the planet?

This is the situation that National Grid is facing – along with many other utilities around the world. With significant operations in the U.K. and Northeastern U.S., they deliver gas and electricity to 20 million people. Their objective is to transfer energy without interruption to customers and maintain the overhead electrical lines and gas pipelines that do this.

Kiersten De West has been leading the charge for greater sustainability for over 20 years, first as the founder and Chief Executive Officer of consultancy Conscientious Innovation, then as Lululemon’s Vice President Global Brand Management and Strategy, and now as Chief Marketing Officer of Alpha Foods—a plant-based food producer. She feels sustainability is undersold and that there is incredible opportunity in helping people achieve the sustainability they aspire to.

Equifruit, a Canadian company importing bananas into the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, saw the need for ethically sourced bananas and fair treatment of farmers. Their challenge was spreading the fair-trade message for fruit.

Unstructured data in Customer Experience (CX) programs needs to be analyzed and delivered at speed, essentially real-time. The program also must be able to go deep with understanding to optimize insight and action.

These principles of speed and depth are core to the Maru software ecosystem and are central to the delivery of understanding executed by our users either within the enterprise or via our advisory experts.

In the many proven use cases that we see there are a set of 5 best practice rules which guarantee outstanding delivery from unstructured data programs.

“You have cancer.”

Those three words begin a cycle of physical and emotional turmoil for almost 2 million patients each year.

Two years ago, that was my sister. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). Like any cancer diagnosis, this brought my entire family up short. While a diagnosis of NHL is typically a bit less traumatic because the probability of treatment success is relatively high, my sister was an exception. She was diagnosed with a high-risk variant called B-cell NHL or “double-hit” lymphoma which has a significantly worse prognosis and requires extremely aggressive chemotherapy.

If anyone believed that COVID-19 and its associated restrictions may have given enterprises a chance to slow their pace and plan the way forward on a relaxed schedule, then they have been sorely disappointed. The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformations, fueled technological innovation and investment, and disrupted the workforce in ways that few could have imagined just 18 months ago. Unsurprisingly, rapid change has impacted insights delivery too.

For our last topic in the 3-part series on HENRYs (High Earners who are Not Rich Yet), we dive into health and wellness.

Using our proprietary software, Maru ran a three-day discussion with this niche group in the US. Maru’s Instant Qualitative platform allowed us to efficiently moderate a discussion and engage with HENRYs on areas related to financial sentiment, travel, and wellness. We have been exploring what we learned with this group in a series of releases – all aimed at taking a pulse on how HENRYs are feeling, behaving, and thinking during these unprecedented times.

When sharing the Maru Text Analytics capability with clients, one of the first questions we are often asked is ‘What level of accuracy can I achieve?”

Speaking to people keen to use automated verbatim analysis tools, they’ve often been promised 100% accuracy from this sort of technology in the past, only to find that this is never the case.

Accuracy is frequently dependent on a number of different factors. Using Maru’s Text Analytics, maximum accuracy is achievable but it needs to be considered in a framework of best practice golden rules for unstructured data analysis.

Continuing with our 3-part series on HENRYs, those High Earners who are Not Rich Yet, we discuss a topic that appears close to the hearts of this group – Travel.

Using our proprietary software, Maru/HUB, we studied this niche group in the US through Maru’s Instant Qualitative platform. It allowed us to efficiently moderate a discussion over three days and engage on the topics of financial sentiment, travel, and wellness. We will be exploring what we learned with this group in a series of releases – all aimed at taking a pulse on how HENRYs are feeling, behaving, and thinking during these unparalleled times.

The NFL Super Bowl is a unique event. It stands head and shoulders above all other sporting cultural events in America in terms of popularity, our research has revealed. But the recent Super Bowl LV was an odd affair. The stands were filled with 30,000 cut-outs of people, mixed in with 25,000 actual fans. Some advertisers skipped the game. The legendary half time show received mixed reviews from the critics. The game lacked excitement; it was a very one-sided affair. Streaming was up but it had the lowest TV rating of any Super Bowl in over 50 years. Yet, this does not mean all was lost.

What do you call a 24–40-year-old with household income of over six figures, yet still lives on the financial edge? A HENRY – a High Earner who is Not Rich Yet. Where HENRYs typically have expensive spending habits, they are bogged down by debt (>$50,000+) and/or don’t have a large nest egg of savings (less than the amount of three months’ salary available in non-retirement fund accounts). This translates to a potentially perilous situation for HENRYs. If a HENRY were to stop working, their financial picture would alter dramatically. Work incomes, not investments or savings, prop up the lifestyle that a HENRY leads. Between paying off debt, supporting living expenses, and the upkeep of an often lavish lifestyle, HENRYs can find themselves living pay cheque to pay cheque. We heard from a HENRY who summarized a typical way of living as “Money is meant to be spent. I do recognize the need and value in saving, but when it comes time to make big purchases, I don’t hesitate”.

Utilities in the US are caught between a rock and a hard place. An estimated 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their bills, including their utility bills. It is projected that Utilities will be stuck with unpaid bills totaling $35-$40 billion dollars by Spring. And that money will be owed by people who are ill equipped to pay it off, if at all.

We believe that Utilities can work through this situation providing they embrace the need for innovation and act right now.

Our recent whitepaper, Customer Focused Utilities, draws on our research on consumer opinion, a utilities roundtable discussion we led, and a scan of industry, public, and social media. From that work three critical themes emerged.

Exploring consumers own innovations is a brilliant and insightful way to provide new stimulus for the innovation cycle and the concept development process. We recently explored cooking and food on our flexible HUB Instant Qual application and gave our respondents the freedom to invent the coolest kitchen gadget they could imagine.

We discovered that most of them invented gadgets that fell into three areas: Planning, Prep and Cleaning. The brilliant consumer creativity that we uncovered, expressed through invented gadgets, revealed areas where people want new solutions, new ideas. These gadget ideas express underlying needs – genuine opportunities ripe for sparkling innovation.