James McQuivey Quotations

As is very often the case, the smart card is a solution designed more for the benefit of the financial institution than it is for the consumer.

There are plenty of trusted Internet brand names, but if you're new to the Web you may not know them. Ask friends where they go and who they buy from. When you use a search engine, you'll see some mom and pop shops that may be totally trustworthy, but you don't know. If you don't have the luxury of a recommendation, stick with a brand name that you're familiar with outside of the Web.

The average person is going to find this quite shocking.

This is not the only television programming that people have. They have the Internet. There is almost nothing on television to which people don't have an alternative.

If they're spending time wondering how to own the customer, they're thinking about the wrong thing. With this much information available to consumers, owning the customer is not a reality.

The problem with Super Bowl advertising now is that companies feel they have to do it because it's their only chance to reach a mass audience. Prices continue to rise even though the usefulness of the ads have diminished.

The good news for these referral services is that they are the dominant show on the Web, compared to AutoNationDirect.com and other dealer sites. The bad news is that with so much competition, they match each other feature-for-feature, and it's very hard to see any profits for them any time soon.