Globalization With a Human Face and a Social Conscience

• The world today is more dangerous and less orderly than it was supposed to be. The world has more poverty more international insecurity and more nuclear proliferation today than it did a decade ago.
  International institutions are weaker. The threats of pandemic disease and climate change are stronger.Cleavages of religious and cultural ideology are more intense then ever. The global financial system is more unbalanced and precarious.It wasn’t supposed to be like this.The evils of globalization are more dangerous than ever before.
  
  Any healthy mind will wonder what went wrong?The answer to this question will be very very long to detail here as it is not the purpose of this posting but it can be summed up in three key words related to History,Finance and Politics:NWO, and Money, and The Ring of power major actors which have caused major global socio-economic disruptions worldwide and which has an incalculable impact on the environment and the future of humanity.
  
  So what can be done about it? Social entrepreneurship seems to be the one solution.
  But what is a Social entrepreneur?A social entrepreneur is one driven by a social mission, a desire to find innovative ways to solve social problems that are not being or cannot be addressed by either the market or the public sector.A social entrepreneur is someone who works in an entrepreneurial manner, but for public or social benefit, rather than to make money. Social entrepreneurs may work in ethical businesses, governmental or public bodies, quangos, or the voluntary and community sector.
  
  Changemakers or social entrepreneurs, are agents of change in society, they combine passion, creativity, business discipline, innovation, and relentless determination to address social issues and problems -- in short to change our world for the better. As Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka says, "Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."
  Social entrepreneurship can be defined as an emerging business paradigm that bridges the non profit and for profit business models with principles that historically have defined what entrepreneurs do.
  
  This hybrid model of doing business matches social vision with sustainable profit in a business plan with two bottom line objectives; financial viability apart from reliance on external support, and a clear social mission that can be quantified and measured in financial terms.
  "What does an entrepreneur do? The first thing is they've given themselves permission to see a problem. Most people don't want to see problems ... Once you see a problem and you keep looking at it you'll find an answer"
  Bill Drayton Source: Massive Change: Bill Drayton Interview

• Why are Social Entrepreneurs important?
  
• Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurs
  More then a trend, social entrepreneurship is closely related to Corporate social Responsibility since business cannot succeed in a society that fails, it has become imperative for companies to partner in the development of the community and environmentthey are in.Corporate responsibility is linked to Business ethics which is a form of the art of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment.
  
  There are two diiferent views on the matter, the humanistic view is that a deteriorating environment and planet is of no relevance in sustaining human life let alone a business. The naturalistic view is where we draw the line between exploiting our natural resources and destroying our fauna and flora for the sake of profiteering and sustainability (Grace and Cohen 2005,144).
  
  Influence from the population, government and competitors are possible forces that can destabilize an organization should its motives or unethical processes become clear. Corporate Social Responsibility has been an issue of some debate. There are some people who claim that Corporate Social Responsibility cherry-picks the good activities a company is involved with and ignores the others, thus 'greenwashing' their image as a socially or environmentally responsible company. There are some other people who argue that it inhibits free markets.
  
  CSR can attribute other business motives, which the companies would dispute. For example,programmes are often undertaken in an effort to distract the public from the ethical questions posed by their core operations. Some that have been accused of this motivation include British American Tobacco (BAT) which produces major CSR reports and the petroleum giant BP which is well known for its high profile advertising campaigns on environmental aspects of their operations.
  
  In my opinion Successful entrepreneurs not only are able to see the future coming but they can help to create it by identifying and getting into emerging markets, social entrepreneurs signal emerging opportunity spaces. Their business models, often mutated to suit local circumstances, offer important clues as to how larger, mainstream, businesses will need to adapt to successfully enter these new markets.In addition to early warning of impending market trends, there are several other reasons for companies to focus more intensely on best practice in social entrepreneurship.
  
  Famous social entrepreneurs: Although the term "social entrepreneur" is fairly new, history is full of people with big ideas whose influence resulted in the reconstruction of entire social and economic systems. Here are some faces that reshaped our world.
  

• Teddy Rosevelt and John Muir at Yosemite
• Susan B. Anthony
• Dr. Maria Montessori
• Frederick Law Olmstead
• Florence Nightingale
• Michael Young, is one of Britain’s foremost social entrepreneurs. Lord Young of Dartington is behind dozens of institutions and charities which he either was founder, or played a major hand in creating —including the Consumers Association and the Open University. He was an innovative and progressive thinker in political and social policy. At the end of World War II, at the early age of 29, he drafted the 1945 Labour Party manifesto “Let Us Face The Future”, which helped bring Atlee’s reforming Labour government to power.
• 
  What the world needs today is this sort of social entrepreneurs, persons who are both soft-hearted and strong-headed who are ready to take risks and who never take a 'No' for an answer,persons who are able to face global socio-economic disruptions with a Human face and a social conscience,yes, it sounds like modern crusading and heroism with a new business model with clear vision on the hidden agenda.

Vente-privee.com business model: online shock prices for chic brands

If you are either a shopping discount addict or a fashion addict or both you have certainly heard about Vente-privee.com. For your knowledge and for Vente-privee.com (free advertising) it is one of the most successful stories of the French Web. For proof, the 360 million Euros sales made in 2007, and the 95% of market shares that it claims on the sector. The reason you never heard about it yet is because its name is exchanged only between friends, as a good tip .It has about 3 million members, they were exclusively recruited by sponsoring or viral marketing.
Link to Nouvel Observateur article
On vente-privee.com for example you can find a half-price Kenzo or Morgan sweater, a coffee-pot Rowenta to - 30%… and even good champagne to - 40%! For that be ready to do a small effort to discover the good deal, the Web sometimes can resemble the paradise (sometimes Hell too).Vente-privee.com sells not only brands clothing but also instruments of kitchen, equipment of DIY, cosmetics products, wine,and even cars!

Vente-privee.com draws its history from the destock market, the co-founder of this website Jacques-Antoine Granjon 41 years old worked for 20 years in the resale roughly to the small retailers and chains of discount shops. It is in 2001,when Granjon imagined for the brands a new concept, when came Internet euphoria, he wondered how to take the wave. Granjon noticed the huge commercial success of the advertising campaign Crossroad at Carrefour " 10 000 television sets at 1 200 francs, and no one more "... And then, one day, he saw a queue of 300 metres at the opening of a private sale of footwear at Westonin the Champs Elysee.Then Bingo! he concluded from it that it was necessary to play at the same time on the feeling of privilege and fright of scarceness: the concept of " sale flash " was born.
Created six years ago, the company’ results equal those of e-commerce French giants. vente-privee. Com invented online occasional sales.The concept met an incredible success and it attracted more than 3.5 million visitors to the first quarter 2007.

a.Vente-privee.com and Customers

• The customers are first of all brands, On Internet; reduction of stocks recovered its dignity to luxury. Christian Lacroix, Burberry, Mark Jacobs or Valentino, fashion, principally female, makes the part of the lion of sales. All brands have unsold items and the growing number of collections, until six a year, encourages them to entrust vente-privee with their products.

• The customers are of course the traditional offline shoppers who converted to online shopping for convenience. Vente privée as an online store is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store requires travel and must take place during business hours. Customers don’t need to drive to the Mall; no need to looking for parking space; no parking fees , no pollution with the car and no need to queue up to make payment. Online shopping is a sort of paradise for online customers and vente privées is a ‘priviliged’spot in that paradise.

• Vente privée gives the costumer the impression and feeling being g a privileged consumer (because he gets an email invitation, which actually is sent to a large public, it is not as private at it sounds) it gives them the impression of having made an incredible bargain and a big deal in a very short time (sometimes in the early morning or even the middle of the night), the customer most of the time clicks and buys impulsively not really certain of needing the item: a Vanessa Bruno at 110 euro instead of 355 , a Dolce and Gabana T-shirt at 42 euro instead of 150, a Zegna shirt for man at 50 euro instead of 100 or the digital camera Sony at 230 euro instead of 400, destocked products are sold between 30 and 70 % less than in boutique

• To enter this virtual world of vente privées, the customers have an access via a devoted electronic mail. «The members are informed of sale thanks to an e-mail. A specific link allows them to not miss the event which lasts only some hours, This system gives feeling to the consumer to be a privileged having access to a virtual luxury show-room thanks to precious in his precious sesame. This impression is reinforced by the well-manicured extremist side of this category of sites.

b. vente-privee.com and Suppliers

• Vente privée gives the opportunity for a better control of sales for brands; it is essential for brands, their notability and their picture. By reducing stocks their products on Internet, they have guarantee not to see dragging their goods loose in the receptacles of markets as very often in the real world. The company disposes of photographs of a real studio with professionals of picture and models.
• The multiplication of the actors and suppliers has the effect a serious battle between websites, notably those of the luxury, to attract the most prestigious brand, but vent privé has more experience with these suppliers.
• With more than a million products delivered a month, venteprivee.com establishes itself as the first customer of service package of Post office in Ile-de-France.
• The talent of vente-privee.com is its ability to entice brands they are its main partners. While, for the marketing representatives for the Adidas, Calvin Klein and other Tefal, the wholesalers at the end of series smelt the sulphur, venteprivee.com knew how to win its dignity. For these brands, it is a new tool of extremely powerful reduction of stocks. Not only, are they not any more afraid to damage their picture with products which trail along loose in receptacles. But with vente privée they are assured to sell 20 000 - 30 000 products in twenty-four hours in discretion, and especially at twice as well brought up prices as with the wholesalers.
• Vente-Privee.com allow to the actors of online sale to create strong events to enliven their customers base and to re-make more dynamic and impulsive purchase at various times of the year over and in more hollow periods.

d-vente-privee and the Owner of the business

Because of the success of Vente-privee.com Jacques-Antoine Granjon became the emblem of the French success of the Net and online shopping. The guests during the delivery of Favor' i had to vote by SMS to elect the most striking personality of the world of online shopping. The CEO of vente-privee.com was chosen to enter the " virtual Pantheon " of the e-business, even if Jacques-Antoine was anxious to underline that he was alive well and truly in the world of the e-business.

1. The customer groups served

· Women have a reputation for shopping more than men due to growing incomes. worldwide, women tend to stay longer at the mall and spend more, according to a recent mall study by the International Council of Shopping Centers. The longer customers stay at a mall, the more shops they will browse, increasing the amount of money they will spend. When men need a pair of pants, they go to the mall and buy a pair of pants,Women, when they shop, tend to go to several different stores and do quality shopping. The woman shopper is the quality shopper who tends to spend more per capita.
· Marketing firms are taking note, figuring out the most creative way to craft their messages to the female consumer .Vente-privée.com seems to target this specific group more than others for all items and products on sale, with a very attractive website.
· In the other hand, Men who can’t be bothered to go out shopping are helping to drive rapid growth in online retailing, according to a survey by the British Council of Shopping Centres .FT.com reports that men have a ‘hunter’ approach to shopping – they know what they want and want to get it as quickly and painlessly as possible. Online shopping is the perfect way for them to do this.
· At every opening of sale, at 7 am, between 100 000 - 200 000 members wait in front of their computer to click on the best bargain. Because the best products are often exhausted at the end of some hours,”Sometimes record up to 30 000 requests a second on the website ", tells Granjon, which must have lined up 70 computer waiters to face up traffic of top.

2- Vente-privee.com revenue sources:

At vente-privee.com benefits flow, because it is a generative business of cash: the customer pays cash from order (also regulating expenses of shipping), but he accepts the packet only two or four weeks later. It has then seven days to return it, according to the rules of the mail order. But according to the trader the rate back would not show... 3 %. What is the size of this new El Dorado? No verifiable study exists.

3-Vente-privee.com competitors:

In its wake, many websites (mere copies) launched themselves, for example, achatVIP.com (the number 2 with 1.799 millions of visitors to the 1st quarter), surinvitation.com, espacemax.com, linvitedesmarques.com, spaces-vip. com, vente-groupee one. com, etc. On most of these websites (except, notably, achatVIP.com and linvitedesmarques.com), you will have to give the email of your sponsor to register you.
Another major competitor of vente-privee is 24h00 , of which the CEO Patrick Robin accuses it disloyal competition and of abuse of dominating position. " Vente-Privee.com is accused of monopolyzing the contracts of exclusivity rights that it imposes on the brands, taking advantage thus of his extremist position dominating the market.
By its power, Vente-Privee.com is the only actor able to do the sales of more than 30,000 items. The power struggle between these websites and the brands is in vente-privee's favor. Even if some refuse, they are numerous to have signed a contract of exclusivity rights, which prevents us from work with them." For jacques-antoine Granjon, this contract of exclusivity rights is justified. "When a brand signs such a contract, this is for the services vente priveeprovides: a down payment on the sale, a better promotion, reports marketing.

4-Can the model apply offline as well, or it is unique to the web?

The answer to this question will be simple: this model can not really apply offline becasue the different actors came from offline models to an online platform to make the concept happen, I beleive that offline shopping is sustainble to a certain point and for a certain occasions , certain purchases, and to certain costommers, but the future is for online shopping and more importantly to this model.

This leads us to question weather this business model is scalable and sustainble in the long term , I think yes it is sustainble because with it we can do our shopping online right at home or from the office before leaving for home. We can buy practically anything online and have it delivered right to our doorstep. So my thinking is, will the malls and supermarkets suffer the same fate as the small local sundry shops? We cannot predict how the internet is going to be in the future but if the technology can advance to a stage whereby you can feel confidence in purchasing online without any questions about security, theft, reliable merchants and quality products, will it kill the offline malls and supermarkets? we will have the answer in few years time.

If I owned vente-privee.com, I would internationalise it(it's in the process anyway) and I would diversify the brands, services and activities for example travel, education, health, and housing.

Freemium = Free+Premium

Once upon a time, in the bad old days of business, giving away a product without charge was unheard of. Sure, Estée Lauder gave samples to celebrities and Gillette sold its razors cheap and made money on the blades.
But free didn't become a serious option until the Internet gave us low-cost online distribution. Adobe did it with its PDF Reader in 1994, Macromedia with its Shockwave Player in 1995. Both became the industry standard, and those companies were able to make money by selling the products' authoring software.

In these days of Web 2.0 services that rely on quick customer adoption, the strategy has become so common that VCs have coined a term for it: freemium.
We're talking about companies like Six Apart, which offers its LiveJournal blogging platform for free and has sold 2 million of its customers a premium version, which costs $20 for a one-year subscription.
Source

Chris Anderson speech at the Nokia World 2007 in Amsterdam last month where he presented some of the ideas included in his new book, entitled ‘Free’, following up his past book, The Long Tail.
In his speech, Anderson explained what disruptions happen in the economy when some basic goods become free or almost free (such as electricity, IT infrastructure or access to information) and what new markets and business models generate from there. It is particularly interesting the list of business models arising from a market of free goods and services (where open source is definitely included in most of them), such as:

- Cross-subsidy: give away the razors, sell the razor blades; or give away music and sell concert tours; or give away the bits and sell the services; or give away flight tickets and sell other tourist services (food, hotel rooms, car rentals, …); or give away a computer game for free and sell virtual land, characters or items in the game, …
- Ad-Supported: magazines, newspapers, blogs, …
Freemium: 99% use the free version, but a few pay extra for a premium version; Skype is in this category and so many other dual-license based open source products
- Gift economy: give people an opportunity and a platform to contribute, like Wikipedia or most of community based projects
great video here

How can giving away product for free financially benefit an e-business?


- Traditionally, software sold on the “freemium” business model (where the base product is free, but some key features are paid) is neatly packaged around “sets” of premium features, wrapped up into carefully calculated monthly rates and sold via fancy names.
Think you didn’t know what a “tall” coffee was? Makes as much sense as me buying “Pro” Flickr account. I’m no pro. I just want their service.source

- People love getting something for free,” says George Scriban, an enterprise technology and strategy analyst in New York. “Having a free, yet still useful, version of the service you’re selling is a proven way to encourage rapid adoption among people who might otherwise pass you by.” source
- When the service is free, word spreads

some online businesses utilizing 'freemium' business model
Examples:

Skype – basic in network voice is free, out of network calling is a premium service
Flickr – a handful of pictures a month is free, heavy users convert to Pro
Trillian – the basic service is free, but there is paid version that is full

advantages of 'freemium' concept

- they are door openers.
- They give brand identity.
- They definitely lift response and have a high perceived value.
- They are powerful to catch more people
- Maximize the reach of media, and new kind of media designed to satisfy everybody
- It previleges one to one, few to few,distribution is free,

disadvantages of 'freemium' concept
-At its heart, the freemium plan is a simple price discrimination plan where you drastically lower the admission price for the service while charging substantially higher costs for other additional benefits.

- “Roll up! Roll up! Shoot the balloon and win a goldfish! No charge!” Fairgrounds across the land ring to this refrain. There’s a clever scam at work that’s been paying dividends for decades. The key is the goldfish.

If you shoot the balloon with the air gun you get the fish in a plastic bag. Your daughter wants to keep the goldfish, not throw it down the nearest drain. So you need a bowl. Wouldn’t you know it, the shooting range proprietor happens to sell goldfish bowls for £10. An apparently free product results in an expensive upgrade.

This is a classic freemium model. Here’s another: Microsoft’s Hotmail service. Users get 250mb of free email storage, but, for £60 can upgrade to 2GB storage, junk filters, parental controls and 20 other features.

Both Hotmail and the goldfish scam feature a key requirement for freemium: customer capture. Emailers can’t walk away from Hotmail because it would require changing their email address. And goldfish owners can’t horrify their offspring by flushing the creature down the toilet.

The masters of freemium selling are crack dealers. In south-central LA you can pick up a crack of rock for free. A few smokes and you’ll be back as a paying customer."
SOURCE

The "easy" Business Model: EASYGROUP

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“What we’re doing is taking away a consumer rip-off,”comments serial entrepreneur and CEO of easyGroup Stelios Haji about the ‘easy’ concept.

Stelios may have come from a wealthy background, but he understands the value of a pound. "The world's biggest companies, such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's, got that way because they sell low-cost products," he says. "The cheaper you can make something, the more people there are who can afford it."

His clever appreciation of low prices led him to examine the success of Southwest Airlines. The result was the start of the low cost airline company easyJet in 1995, based at Luton airport. It pitched itself as the low-cost, no frills option and quickly gained huge publicity.EasyJet follows the Southwest Airlines model of offering cut-price fares for bare-bones service, filled a void in a European industry trying to move beyond its high-regulation, high-cost roots, the case for the other businesses may be less clear. For marketers, Stelios is a flag-bearer for branding. EasyJet enjoys massive brand awareness and serves as an example of how the use of simple branding techniques can redefine markets.
From this airline business other have sprung up all sharing the same bright orange colour of the ‘easy’ logo yet it is not just the bright orange colour logo that the different business share they also share the same no frills cost minimizing approach with the added spice of a radical variable pricing policy

Specifically unlike its main competitors the easy company does not set single prices but rather adjust prices to match demand conditions. The principle is remarkably simple as demand goes up so do prices.
The easyGroup revenue sources and profits are either from selling shares in the businesses or by licensing or franchising the brand to reputable partners. The easy brand currently operates more than a dozen industries mainly in travel, leisure, telecoms and personal finance.
Besides the ticket sources esyJet venue from non-ticket sources (including in flight sales of food and beverages, excess baggage charges, change fees, credit card booking fees etc) was up 19.1% to £61.7m
Total revenue per seat grew 4% with passenger revenue up 2.3% per seat and ancillary revenues, which continue to grow significantly ahead of capacity, up 22% per seat versus Q1 last year. Car rental and insurance partner revenues were particularly strong.
‘More value for less’ is easyGroup’s motto it means bringing more value to consumers without compromising on the quality of the product. Customers who order in advance or at off-peak times are rewarded with an even better price. At easyJet for example people who book early or choose a slack time of day obtain better deals as charges rise as seats fill up.
The possibilities are limitless: low-cost car rentals, accommodation, coach travel, sea travel

Lastminute was a travel website where fares and hotel rooms were far cheaper if you booked them at the last minute. It was fact. Just ten years later, that ‘fact' has become history. Today we all know that if you book at the last minute you are far more likely to pay top dollar than the rock bottom price.
The intervening decade has seen a pricing revolution that has turned consumer behavior on its head and turbo-charged business profits.
The name of that revolution is yield management (YM).
Technically, YM is defined as "the process of understanding, anticipating and reacting to consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue”.

The internet has given many businesses direct access to their customers for the first time, allowing them to set their own prices, Without it, it is doubtful that the low-cost flight revolution could have occurred at all. "It has been an essential feature of the development of many of our companies," says James Rothnie, director of corporate affairs at easyGroup, which developed budget airline easyJet. "Without it we wouldn't have been able to offer such cheap fares and we would not have been able to compete so well.
"It's a powerful tool. But for it to work you have to understand your customers intimately." For instance, you don't want to set your early prices so low that you fill your plane with people paying peanuts. And when it comes to peak demand you don't want to set your prices so high that people refuse to travel. "Get it right and it can transform your business. Get it wrong and it could put you out of business," he warns.

EasyJet keeps costs low by eliminating the unnecessary costs and ‘frills’ which characterise ‘traditional’ airlines.
This is done in a number of ways:
- Use of the Internet to reduce distribution costs - approximately 95 % of all seats are sold over the Internet.
- Maximising utilisation of each aircraft significantly reduces the unit cost.
- Efficient use of airports - EasyJet flies to main destination airports throughout Europe, but gains efficiencies through rapid turnaround times, and progressive landing charges agreements with the airports.
-Ticketless travel
- and Eliminating free catering on-board

easyGroup is a business incubator with a business model based on the quick and cost effective launch of independently run easy-branded ventures. When easyGroup wanted to launch three new ventures in a very short time, a solution a Web-based booking and administration system was built on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 that can be quickly adapted for numerous online ventures. This new technology benefited the company with fast time to market of new business ventures, low-cost of ownership, easily replicated for many new ventures and highly secure and reliable
easyGroup saw a way to use technology to automate the process of serving customers, thereby reducing labor costs. All bookings made through the Internet.

This model seeks to link the demand curve to every penny possible and pocket the extra that the impatient and spendthrift are willing to pay to have just what they want when they want it.easy Group Yield management is combined with web booking
easyJet low cost airline model is a combinaton between aggressive yield management, web booking and radical simplification of the service process : ‘sell seats cheap to early bookers, expensively to late bookers’.In practice this means that people who buy early or choose a slack time of day obtain better deals charges rise as seats fill up.Similarly the more people who hire cars from easyCar the greater the cost to the remaining customers The first seats sold at easyJet are cheap, the last few the more expensive the same rule apply to other easy companies.
Although many businesses practice such yield management few do it as effectively as the easyGroup business

If applied correctly it can be very effective , means raising revenue when such services are popular.
Conventional fixed price operators by contrast simply turn customers away when the flight is full they may even loose money in peak times when they buy extra extra capacity, to provide customers with the service they want at the promised price.

The other key feature of easyGroup model is the emphasis of stripping out costs whenever possible and being able to offer publicity grabbing prices for example ₤1 airline seat. It is a robust business model with a low cost base.

EasyGroup has a similar business model to companies like FreshDirect and Dell. Both companies are using technology to eliminate the middlemen to deliver lower cost and higher value to customers. These companies are not internet companies per se, but they are examples of how internet technology and general information technology can become a competitive advantage, if applied correctly to support a rational business model.
Borrowing its business model from American air carrier Southwest, EasyJet and its Republic of Ireland-based rival Ryanair are two of the largest low cost airlines in Europe, and the rivalry between them is intense. The two companies have slightly different strategies. EasyJet flies mainly to leading airports while Ryanair uses far more secondary airports to reduce costs. EasyJet places more focus on attracting business travelers as well as leisure travelers, although all its aircraft have single-class cabins.

Another main competitor is Air Berlin Europe’s third-biggest low-cost airline after Ryanair and easyJet. It has an extensive network in Germany.
All three companies operate within the low-cost airline business model (also known as a no-frills or discount carrier / airline) is an airline that offers generally low fares in exchange for eliminating many traditional passenger services. The concept originated in the United States before spreading to Europe in the early referring to airlines with a lower operating cost structure than their competitors such as BA, Air France KLM or Lufthansa.

If I owned the company (easyJet) I would develop the idea of providing an alternative to the current air-traffic system, where “hurry up and wait” has become the grumbled mantra of millions of frazzled travellers. The driving to the airport to arrive 90 minutes before departure. The congestion at the terminal. The snail-paced search for a parking spot. The queue at the ticket counter, shuffle through security.
The concept will be Small planes, small airports. Then there’s the question of demand. With ticket prices expected to be higher than traditional coach fares, many members of the flying public may find the headaches of hub-based air travel a relative bargain. In the short term, most microjet seats will be filled by business travellers rather than vacationers.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou at Zeitgeist Europe 2007