No season tests TiVo processing power like fall, when the new crop of television shows vies for our attention and hard drive space. However, it takes no more than a cursory look at the new fall lineups to see that familiarity is the theme this season. There are countless reality TV shows that range from enticing to vapid; all of them either vote people off each week or peer into the scripted hijinks of former (or aspiring) D-list actors. And then there's the latest trend in television programming, the spinoff shows with the same title: Three Law & Orders! Three CSIs! Two Apprentices!

In this spirit, here's the all-spinoff programming guide to Forrester's fall retail research lineup. Set your season passes for:

• The Apparel Of The OC. If magazines documenting the apparel of the stars exist, why not a TV show? Of course, beautiful people of SoCal are notoriously capricious with fashion -- how can apparel firms manage the demand uncertainty? Increasing sales forecasting accuracy, responsive supply chains, and accelerated product development -- courtesy of guest star Innovation Networks -- will show them the way.

• Curb Your Enthusiasm . . . For Skype. Will Larry David-style neuroses hit eBay when it thinks about how it overpaid for Skype? Sure, IP telephony will grow in 2005, but a $2.6 billion price tag? That's far more than it paid for Shopping.com and Rent.com -- combined.

• Survivor: Web Content Management. Although they weren't subjected to the scorching heat of a Guatemalan jungle for 40 days or taunts from a smarmy host while standing on one leg for 10 hours, Web content management vendors probably felt enervated after they endured our rigorous Forrester Wave process. Vendors Tridion, FatWire, and Interwoven were our retail survivors, but unfortunately they did not receive $1 million or a new car from our sponsors.

• Desperate Housewives Shop Online. $329 billion . . . the marketing budget for this spinoff? Close, but the correct answer is the size of the US online retail market in 2010. If you thought women ran things just on Wisteria Lane, you haven't looked online: A majority of Web buyers are women, and they're the catalyst for the fastest-growing online categories like food and beverage, health and beauty, and apparel.

• Arrested Development . . . Of Loyalty Programs. Just like the Bluth company's house building, retail loyalty programs haven't always lived up to expectations. So how can retailers get started with loyalty? After analyzing their customer knowledge needs and product mix, retailers that build loyalty programs will find a technology landscape much like the Bluth family: fragmented, but with cat-like agility.

• CSI: WOM. If one acronym is good, two must be better! Fortunately, you don't need a forensics expert to identify word-of-mouth-driven online consumers. By tapping into consumers' natural word of mouth and stimulating it with a compelling message, retail and consumer products companies will have the foundation set for their word-of-mouth marketing campaign.

As a side note, this will be the season finale for my FirstLook emails. I now run the Consumer Markets team and am not actively writing retail research anymore. We have an A-list cast on the retail team that you'll be hearing from in these monthly newsletters: Nikki Baird, who writes about in-store technologies; a new online retail analyst (name to be revealed soon!), who just signed on and will start in late October; and Tamara Mendelsohn, who writes about the convergence of Web and store technologies. Look for emails from these folks in the coming months. I'm sure they will enjoy the dialogue with you that has been so engaging for me over the past few years.

Kind regards,


Carrie Johnson

Research Referenced In This Issue eBay Buys Shopping.com: Let The Consolidation Begin (37158) eBay Overpays For Skype (37717) Getting Retailers Started With A Loyalty Program (36755) How The Web Is Changing In-Store Experiences (37988) How To Build A Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Campaign (37018) Innovation Networks (34580)    IP Telephony Purchase Plans For 2005: Strong Growth With Moderate Resistance (37437) Keeping Stores Innovative (37962) Managing Apparel's Demand Uncertainty (37428) Selling To Word-Of-Mouth-Driven Consumers (36756) Smarter Stores: Are We There Yet? (37497) Technology's Role In Driving Apparel Supply Chain Responsiveness (37205) The Forrester Wave™ 2005 (36769) The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Retail, Q3 2005 (36728) The North American Consumer: Online Retail Update (36730) US eCommerce: 2005 To 2010 (37626) US Online Auction Sales, 2005 To 2010 (37848)

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