Articles from the areas of clothing, electronics, toys and furnishings did particularly well, the Swiss Retail Federation said in response to a query from the AWP news agency.

"The retailers are satisfied," says association spokeswoman Dagmar Jenni. Even retailers not actively promoting Black Friday have benefited from higher demand, she said. "Many are reporting back that it went better than expected."

Clothes and electronics in demand

The association does not yet have concrete figures on the development of sales. So far, retailers have been able to enjoy high demand, particularly in the areas of clothing and accessories, electrical goods, cosmetics, furnishings and toys, as various retailers have reported on request. Warm winter clothing in particular, but also outdoor articles and jeans, for example, have sold well.

Consumers also made purchases in the stores: "The days have been very positive and we are more than satisfied with the sales," explains a Lidl spokesperson. In stationary retail, too, electronics, toys and textiles were the most popular items.

Discount weeks instead of days

However, the initial results for Coop's online stores were somewhat more mixed. As expected, Black Friday was the day with the highest sales, but the Interdiscount website did not achieve quite as high sales revenues as in the previous year: "On microspot.ch, on the other hand, we were able to increase sales again compared to the previous year," a media spokeswoman stated.

So the first battle is over, but the war for customers in the Christmas business is far from over. Because the trend is moving away from a single day of big discounts to entire promotional weeks.

For example, Digitec Galaxus, Switzerland's largest online retailer, offered deals for an entire week for the first time. Accordingly, they achieved less sales on Black Friday itself than in the previous year, admits spokesman Stephan Kurmann.

The bottom line, however, is that the calculation still works out: "If you look at the entire campaign week, we have seen an increase in sales compared to the same period last year," Kurmann says. In concrete terms, there was a sales increase in the low double-digit percentage range. This was also due to the fact that the average value of an order in the online stores of Digitec and Galaxus was two percent higher than in 2021.

Over one million packages per day

The distribution of around 1,000 articles over an entire week also paid off technically and logistically: "The servers withstood the increased number of visitors to our websites and there were no technical problems whatsoever," says the spokesman for the Migros subsidiary with satisfaction.

Manor, meanwhile, said that customer feedback had been positive and that online performance had been "stable and reliable". Jumbo, Fust and Brack.ch also reported that the technology had worked perfectly. Only Media Markt experienced "some minor technical difficulties" in the meantime.

And the "stretched" discount days have also had a favorable impact on delivery times. At Digitec Galaxus, for example, the option introduced for customers to forego the fastest possible delivery has also played a major role. This not only relieved the burden on warehouse staff.

This should also please Swiss Post employees. In the peak parcel season leading up to Christmas, the company expects to handle up to 1.3 million parcels on peak days. In the week following the first discount battle, the volume is expected to skyrocket to an average of around one million "Päckli" per day, as Swiss Post announced last week. That would be about 60 percent more than on an average day. (sda/ background by Simon Stahl; AWP)

With UN Sustainable Development Goal 9, the international community aims to promote sustainable industry and infrastructure. The digitization of industry can influence market access and the positioning of companies in sustainable value chains. "Environmental management along the supply chain can be improved through the use of digital technologies. This is because they can continuously provide data and thus improve transparency. This makes sustainability risks such as relocation to countries with lower social and environmental standards visible and gives us clues as to how global value chains can be made more sustainable," explains Silke Niehoff from the Institute for Transformative Sustainability Research IASS in Potsdam. She adds that However, investment in digital tools and the necessary skills would still be lacking in some countries.

Digitization of industry: Smaller companies have some catching up to do

Silke Niehoff is co-author of a comparative study entitled. "Sustainability related impacts of digitalization on cooperation in global value chains". The study examines digital development in the emerging markets of China and Brazil and the industrialized country of Germany. Employees in companies of various sizes and in several sectors were surveyed.

The researchers were able to show that the inequalities at country level are not as pronounced as experts had predicted. However, clear differences emerged within all countries, between different sectors and companies of different sizes. In all countries, fewer than 10 percent of companies said they would fully digitize their processes for working with partners. Partial digitization, on the other hand, is more widespread: 46 percent of Brazilian, 61 percent of Chinese and 63 percent of German companies currently already work in this way.

Large companies are making greater use of the opportunities offered by digitization than small and medium-sized enterprises in all three countries. "However, SMEs form the backbone of national economies and should not be left behind. Therefore, global governance is needed to capture inequalities at the country level, and additionally national support policies to strengthen SMEs," says co-author Grischa Beier from the IASS.

Automotive sector is a digitalization pioneer 

Opportunities for more sustainable production could be provided by fully digital integration of production data into companies' environmental management systems. It potentially simplifies environmental compliance and the environmental certification process for companies and regulators, which often require analysis of the entire value chain. However, only 9 percent of German companies, 3 percent of Brazilian companies and 6 percent of Chinese companies currently use this option.

In Germany, 84 percent of respondents from the automotive sector reported at least partial digitization of cooperation processes, compared with 72 percent of Chinese and 62 percent of Brazilian companies. More than in other sectors, the number of cooperation partners among the companies surveyed has decreased as a result of the digitization of processes, while the quality of cooperation has improved as a result, according to the respondents. According to the authors, the automotive sector is an interesting object for future research: other companies could benefit from an evaluation of the experiences from this sector on their way to more sustainability.

Source: IASS

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/digitalisierung-der-industrie-ungleichheiten-koennen-nachhaltige-entwicklung-gefaehrden/

Computer systems that use artificial intelligence to interpret images and support doctors in making diagnoses are increasingly being used in medicine. This works by comparing the new images with existing image data. The machine "learns" continuously. However, machine learning based on images has its pitfalls.

Copyright can prevent machine learning

Indeed, using real image data to train machine learning can raise practical and ethical issues: The images could violate copyright laws, infringe on people's privacy, or be biased toward a particular racial or ethnic group. To avoid these pitfalls, researchers can use image generation programs to create synthetic data for model training. However, these techniques have limited application because expert knowledge is often required to design an image generation program that can produce effective training data.

Researchers at MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and other institutes therefore took a different approach. Instead of developing customized image generation programs for a specific training task, they collected a dataset of 21,000 publicly available programs from the Internet. Then they used this large collection of basic image generation programs to train a computer vision model. These programs generate different images that represent simple colors and textures. The researchers did not edit or modify the programs, each of which consists of only a few lines of code.

Image programs as a valid replacement

The models they trained with this large dataset of programs classified images more accurately than other synthetically trained models. And although their models performed worse than those trained with real data, the researchers showed that increasing the number of image programs in the data set also increased the model's performance and showed a path to higher accuracy.

"It turns out that using many uncurated programs is actually better than using a small set of programs that need to be manipulated by humans. Data is important, but we've shown that you can get pretty far without real data," says Manel Baradad, a PhD student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and lead author of the research paper describing the technique.

Rethinking the pre-training

Machine learning models are typically pre-trained, meaning they are first trained on a dataset to develop parameters that can be used to accomplish another task. A model for classifying X-ray images might be trained on a huge dataset of synthetically generated images before being trained on a much smaller dataset of real X-ray images for its actual task.

The researchers had previously shown that they could use a handful of image generation programs to create synthetic data for pretraining the model, but the programs had to be carefully designed so that the synthetic images matched certain properties of the real images. This made it difficult to extend the technique. The new work instead used an enormous dataset of uncurated image generation programs.

Machine learning with "artificially" generated images

The researchers began by compiling a collection of 21,000 image generation programs from the Internet. All of the programs are written in a simple programming language and consist of just a few snippets of code, so they generate images quickly. "These programs were designed by developers around the world to create images that have some of the characteristics we are interested in. They create images that look almost like abstract art," explains Baradad.

These simple programs can be run so quickly that the researchers did not have to create images in advance to train the model. The researchers found that they could generate images and train the model simultaneously, streamlining the process. They used their huge dataset of image generation programs to pre-train computer vision models for both supervised and unsupervised image classification tasks. In supervised learning, image data is tagged with labels, while in unsupervised learning, the model learns to categorize images without labels.

Accuracy improvement

When they compared their pre-trained models to modern computer vision models pre-trained with synthetic data, their models were more accurate, i.e., they assigned images to the correct categories more often. While accuracy was still lower than models trained with real data, their technique narrowed the performance gap between models trained with real data and those trained with synthetic data by 38 percent.

"Importantly, we show that the performance scales logarithmically for the number of programs collected. We do not reach saturation of performance, meaning that if we collect more programs, the model would perform even better. So there is a way to extend our approach," says Manel.

The researchers also used each image-generating program for pre-training to determine the factors that contribute to the model's accuracy. They found that the model performed better when a program generated a greater variety of images. They also found that colorful images with scenes filling the entire canvas improved the model's performance the most.

Having demonstrated the success of this pretraining approach, the researchers now want to extend their technique to other types of data, such as multimodal data containing text and images. They also want to continue looking for ways to improve the classification performance of images.

Source: Techexplore.com

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/forscher-finden-weg-fuer-maschinelles-lernen-ohne-echte-bilddaten/

To find out how customer service has changed, what customers want today, and what untapped potential lies in properly linking digital with physical channels, Deloitte studied more than 190 companies in 21 countries (from the banking, insurance, and telecommunications industries). The study focused on the synchronization of physical (branches, call centers) and digital channels as well as the opportunities that digitization of physical devices brings.

It turned out that the younger generations are increasingly active and have different needs when it comes to staying in contact with companies. They value customer service across multiple channels and digitalization in personal contact, because they are not mutually exclusive - they work in parallel.

For example, 85 percent of Millennials and Generation Z, born after 1980, prefer to stay in touch with a company through multiple channels. However, one in two of them finds it important to be able to see a customer service representative in person when needed. One possibility, for example, is for employees to share a digital screen with customers. This is because they are also 1.5 times more likely to pre-sell cross-sell offers, collect contact details and follow up later.

Advertisingweek.ch spoke with Roger Lay, Deloitte Partner for Digital Marketing, about the key findings of the study:

Mr. Lay, you studied customer service in various industries in 21 countries. What surprised you most about the results of the study?

The study shows how all three industries (banks, insurance & telcos) are relatively similar in certain aspects of an omni-channel proposition: Although the digitalization maturity for web and mobile is definitely different in these industries (and in many places already very mature), there is still a bigger gap when it comes to consulting with customers across all channels in a consistent and contextually relevant way. Data collected in one place just doesn't seem to be considered in the other.

How does Switzerland compare internationally - where are the biggest to-dos?

Overall, Switzerland is quite comparable with the other European countries and often ranks in the middle. At the industry level, however, there are definitely differences: for example, in the insurance industry, quoting and the conclusion of more complex product contracts via purely digital channels is not yet as common as in England. In addition, customer centricity is very much channel-driven and not cross-channel. The biggest to-dos are probably company-dependent. In general, however, it can be said that these are located in the definition of an overarching experience strategy so that customer and marketing data from all channels can be collected, structured, processed, analyzed, and the respective insights then effectively orchestrated to all interaction channels.

What opportunities lie for companies in the evolution of customer needs toward omnichannel?

Companies can thus form a much closer relationship with customers. They can respond much better and faster to customers' needs through the insights gathered in the interaction channels. This helps to avoid drop-outs, conduct business more successfully, and make cross-selling and upselling more automated - just to name a few examples. In other words, productivity increases and transactional NPS is boosted, leading to a higher top line overall. In addition, employer attractiveness also increases and onboarding of new employees becomes more efficient. It should also be remembered that a lot of paper can also be saved in terms of environmental protection and sustainability.

Here you can download the report.

The International Metrology Congress (Congrès International de Métrology, CIM) was first held in Bordeaux in 1983. Since then, the event has moved around a lot until it settled definitively in Lyon. Metrologists are used to working alone, but they need to keep up to date with the latest technical standards, regulations and technological developments. It is from this desire and need that this International Congress of Metrology was born. This biennial congress moves with the times and their constraints, but has always kept its DNA, as Pierre Barbier, initiator of the event, notes.

International Metrology Congress: Embedded in important trade show

Once again this year, the congress is dedicated to industry and R&D best practices applied to measurement, analysis and testing. The event is a meeting place for science, industry and institutional metrology organizations. Once again, the congress will take place from March 7 to 10 as part of the French industrial trade fair "Global industry" at Eurexpo Lyon, where around 40,000 visitors are expected. 

The event extends over four days with the aim of addressing, studying and dealing with all the topics that meet the international challenges. The International Metrology Congress is an opportunity to share expertise and gather information on the development of research in the field of measurement.

A "muscular" program at the heart of global challenges

200 presentations are planned, six roundtable discussions on the current topics of hydrogen, the circular economy, Industry 4.0, digital change, professions and health. A plenary event with the motto "Limitless Metrology at your fingertips" will also focus on topics such as Industry 4.0, the environment and health. There will also be a supporting program with many networking opportunities, including in the "Village Métrologie", where various poster presentations will also be on display. The organizers are expecting around 800 participants from 45 countries to attend the congress, mainly from industry, but around a third will also come from education, research and calibration institutes. 

Source and further information: www.cim2023.com

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/international-metrology-congress-feiert-40-jaehriges-bestehen/

Visible!

Winning customers in an increasingly noisy world.

• Author: Oliver Pott and Jan Bargfrede
• Publisher: Campus Verlag, 2022
• Pages: 288
• ISBN: 9783593516172

Thanks to the Internet, there is a veritable flood of information today. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult for marketing to address target groups efficiently. According to the authors, the solution is smart visibility. In an extremely reader-friendly and plausible way, they explain the secrets of marketing success in the digital information age. They show why it is no longer enough to simply be visible, and how to make the right offer to the right customers at the right moment. A book worth reading for anyone even remotely involved in marketing.

Pick-up feedback for managers

Knowledge and methods for an autonomous feedback and learning culture.

• Author: Tanja Föhr
• Publisher: managerSeminare Verlag, 2021
• Pages: 128
• ISBN: 9783958910911

In our globalized and digitalized working world, feedback is essential for companies. However, feedback presented in a formulaic way usually does not lead to success; on the contrary, it can even depress performance. For feedback to be effective, says coach Tanja Föhr, we have to actively solicit it. She distinguishes between different types of feedback - from coaching to appreciation rituals to evaluation. This clear book offers many easy-to-implement tips on how managers and employees can get exactly the feedback they need.

Cold calling - but the right way!

Sell more easily without pressure - through focused B2B new customer acquisition.

• Author: Oliver Büchel
• Publisher: Oliver Büchel, 2022
• Pages: 198
• ISBN: 9798409864903

When customer acquisition becomes inefficient, many companies increase the number of blows and the pressure. But neither will lead to the desired success, because the business world has changed, says Oliver Büchel. The author shows why classic cold calling is working less and less effectively, and he presents a way out that is much more pleasant for both buyer and seller. The book is rich in vivid experiences and practical examples. It is suitable for salespeople who want to take a new approach to cold calling.

Account management strategies in B2B sales

Generating customer value and building sustainable business relationships - methodology, processes, tools.

• Author: Hans-Peter Neeb
• Publisher: Springer Gabler, 2022
• Pages: 158
• ISBN: 9783658372637

B2B sales have some catching up to do in this country, says Hans-Peter Neeb. Above all, there is a lack of structured processes. Neeb's book is a stringent guide to the individual phases of a sales process that helps to systematically manage larger customers. The specifics and challenges of B2B business are adequately addressed. Experienced sales people will recognize a lot. For specialists and managers who are moving into a sales role, the book is a good introduction.

Preparations for the so-called Feast of Love are once again in full swing, and Black Friday is the darkest harbinger of it. In the midst of this consumer noise, a beautiful word finds its way into the vocabulary of advertisers: preloved. Old love never rusts, as the old saying about love goes. It's no wonder, then, that a term that echoes the meaning of the saying is booming in the run-up to Christmas.

But please not in old German, but rather in catchy English: preloved. Doesn't mean new, but already loved, worn, used or seen and is usually pronounced slightly reproachfully and packed into headlines. The English preposition (pre) and the past participle (loved), it seems, demonstrate another wisdom of the German language: Doppel genäht hält besser.

Fast fashion and second hand are out

So it's not surprising that preloved is being pushed everywhere right now. In the media, in advertising, in department stores and on online platforms. The sharing economy has been conjured up for some time and accompanied by an English quote: Sharing is caring. But anyone who strolls through the city centers on Saturdays and observes people shopping or counts the cardboard boxes of online shopping at the side of the road may ask themselves what the caring really is.

Agreed, fast fashion was yesterday. Hardly anyone dares to buy Zara, H&M, Boohoo or whatever they're all called with a clear conscience anymore. But the things that are carried home or delivered in branded carrier bags and boxes are always new.

Recycling was also yesterday. Today, it's called upcycling. What is meant is the recycling of already used materials, which are transformed into new products. Unfortunately, this is difficult to do with fast-fashion rags, because their production is already harmful to the environment and their remains end up in repositories such as the Atacama Desert in northern Chile or in Africa and Southeast Asia instead of being upcycled.

Secondhand was also yesterday. For decades, the term was able to hold its own, even though there was always something slightly grubby about it. Second hand? Even from someone you didn't know? Not everyone's cup of tea. But preloved? As a consumer, you melt from so much love and perhaps think to yourself: "If only I hadn't put that old thing in the clothing collection or the incinerator, then I wouldn't have to pay so much for it. And it wouldn't have to be advertised again.

Just in time for the start of Christmas shopping, the new webshop live. The products are made from plants, components such as cactus, pineapple and grapes are processed into vegan leather. Sustainability is the clear mission of Perifree to reduce the use of leather in the world.

The agency Quade & Zurfluh has now relaunched the sustainable brand. In addition to the new website, the entire identity of Perifree was revised.

I am German, but grew up in Paris. I was therefore not socialized to the VW Beetle, but to the Citroën "deux cheveaux". In addition, my parents lived in Boulogne Billancourt in the 1970s - not far from the large Citroën plant. So the brand with the double angle has accompanied me since my earliest childhood. And in the days of my childhood, this angle was one thing above all. Pointed, angular and aspiring. No other brand had such a logo.

With the introduction of the legendary DS (Déesse) in 1959, this very pointed double angle was born. The oval, which had dominated the previous 40 years, disappeared completely at that time. From then on, the soaring arrow-shaped angles marked an era of innovation: DS, Ami6, SM, CX - until the brand was taken over by Peugeot PSA in the late 1970s. As a result, there were more and more identical vehicles from both brands. Citroën was unable to break out of this grip for many years.

It is certainly no coincidence that with the spin-off of the DS product line into a sub-brand in 2009 - 50 years after the launch of the DS - Citroën's identity finally began to wobble. From now on, the noble and elegant flair was destined for DS premium cars. These also adopted the character traits of the pointed double angle to their very skillful logo. Rest-Citroën, in turn, was now to become the creative brand for everyone. The result: in the years from 2009 onwards, the brand was apparently continuously on a creative quest itself when it came to its logo, as the Boomerang-like angles and the misplaced, pseudo-contemporary lettering revealed. Already in 2016 - seven years later - it had to be revised, five years later another time - which, interestingly, is kept quiet in the official logo history.

In 2021, PSA and Fiat Chrysler merged to form the Stellantis Group. And, oh wonder: it seems that - in spite of the fact that Citroën was now demoted to one portfolio brand among many - they decided to make a real radical move again, which was presented in September 2022. This was less successful with the very default claim "Nothing moves you like a Citroën" - you are welcome to replace the last word with any car brand - but with the logo and brand design, the clear emancipation from DS Automobiles, which has also been operating as a fully independent brand since 2015, has now been achieved.

After 13 years of the will-o'-the-wisp, a branding is emerging that can make Citroën a proud brand again, independently and without melancholy after the lost DS inspiration. And this under the sign with which André Citroën had started his automobile production in 1919: the double angle in the oval. Incidentally, the origin of the "deux chevrons" is the double The company had already made a name for itself with the production of these gears before entering the automotive market. It was used on the Type A - the first European mass-produced automobile - in an oval badge.

With Citroën's electric future, this very symbol is now being revived - the spirit of large-scale production and the compact Citroën 2CV from 1950 are coming back to life here: "Revolutionary and courageous cars that break with traditional rules of industrial production and usher in a new era of (electric) family mobility," is how Citroën CEO Vincent Cobée comments on the new brand identity. And I think he's basically right.

Nevertheless, it remains to be criticized that unfortunately once again the consistency in the formal is missing. The line thicknesses and the proportions of the sign could have been oriented a bit more to the elegant original - then no Easter egg would have resulted. And why couldn't you bring yourself to allow your new, really well-done corporate typeface in the brand logo as well? Instead, the typographic accident of 2009 was merely ironed out. Too bad.

All in all, a big step in the right direction - but not yet consistent enough. So I expect further optimization in the next few years. And this will certainly come soon.

* Heinrich Paravicini is founder and creative director of Mutabor.

Gryps supports over 45,000 Swiss SMEs in their day-to-day business. The digital service platform is a subsidiary of Axel Springer Schweiz and provides entrepreneurs with offers as well as information and advice to reduce their administrative workload.

Heads has sharpened the positioning for the online portal, further developed the corporate wording and formulated the self-image by means of brand promise and claim: The promise "Master your everyday SME business cleverly and independently. Thanks to Gryps, many things are simply well solved" is also available in short form as the claim "Simply good for business". In addition, the corporate identity has been consistently geared towards small and medium-sized enterprises.

With the redesign of the logo, corporate colors and fonts and the development of an image concept, directly from the SME world, the platform now appears more modern and clearly conveys that Gryps is entirely at the service of SMEs - the backbone of the Swiss economy.

The auditing firm Deloitte has published a new resilience barometer for the Swiss economy. For this purpose, the authors divided the economy into eight areas with further sub-areas. Each sub-sector was then examined for its resilience to three selected scenarios. The scenarios chosen were firstly a highly contagious and disease-causing pandemic, secondly an aggravation of global political tensions with the formation of blocs, an increase in sanctions and the disruption of supply chains, and thirdly a further aggravation of climate change with extreme climatic events such as heat waves or floods. All of these scenarios can be assumed to pose a significant risk to basic supply.

Significant differences between the economic sectors

The study reveals significant differences between the eight areas that are central to the functioning of the economy: The financial market infrastructure, for example, is gratifyingly resilient. The currently much-discussed energy supply shows certain weaknesses, but the basic supply can largely be maintained. Healthcare is less resilient, and would suffer considerable restrictions in the Global Pandemic Outbreak and Geopolitical Tension and Bloc Formation scenarios. Logistics is also highly vulnerable due to globalization, especially in light of the Geopolitical Tensions scenario. "Where people are doing important work locally, it becomes difficult in the event of a crisis," said Ralph Wyss, partner and head of the defense, security and justice industry practice at Deloitte Switzerland.

Logistics as a core must be strengthened

While certain gaps in healthcare provision are unsurprising in the event of a severe pandemic, the resilience of logistics may well be strengthened. It is clear that the Swiss economy is heavily dependent on global supply chains that are not resilient in the event of either a pandemic or an increase in political tensions. "Functioning logistics is at the heart of the economy. Companies and associations should therefore quickly address the weaknesses revealed in the study," explains Ralph Wyss.

Resilience strongly dependent on scenario

Of the three scenarios analyzed, a pandemic has the strongest impact on the Swiss economy - even though Switzerland and the whole world have already gained a lot of experience with Covid-19: "It is very difficult to build up better resilience in the event of an even more contagious pandemic. Ultimately, in such a case, healthy people help sick people. As long as technology does not significantly substitute for people, the weakness in the system will remain," says Ralph Wyss.

The increase in extreme climatic events is having a less pronounced, but nevertheless gradually noticeable, impact. In addition to logistics, these are also having an increasing impact on food supplies. "In the next three to five years, extreme climatic events are not expected to jeopardize the basic supply of the Swiss economy. Forecasts further into the future are very much dependent on the success of the international community in halting the global rise in temperature," says Céline Neuenschwander, researcher at Deloitte Switzerland and project leader of the study.

Public safety depends heavily on the militia system

Public safety is largely resilient to crises in all scenarios. One outlier is the medical sector, which suffers severe restrictions in the pandemic scenario. The army, as the last resort for maintaining public security, has difficulties, especially in the Geopolitical Tensions scenario, because armaments are now difficult to procure. In addition, numerous institutions such as the army, civil defense, crisis teams, and even the fire department are based on the militia system almost throughout the country. "As the duration of a crisis progresses, the people responsible in a militia function will have to return to their traditional professions. This is the big challenge for our otherwise well-functioning militia system," says Ralph Wyss.

Financial Market Infrastructure and Energy Supply Pleasingly Resilient

On the positive side, financial market infrastructure and energy supply both show high resilience scores in the overall evaluation. However, in the event of strong geopolitical tensions and intensified bloc formation, the resilience of Switzerland's energy supply rapidly declines. "Given the increasingly digitalized economy, a vulnerable energy supply is problematic. Currently, most companies have therefore taken measures to understand their own consumption more precisely and are preparing to reduce power consumption in the short term and plan how to deal with contingency and power interruptions," says Ralph Wyss.

The study deliberately distinguishes between maintaining the current comfortable situation and a basic supply that only provides what is necessary. "It is gratifying to see that, with few exceptions, the Swiss economy can ensure a good basic supply. However, the weaknesses identified show that companies and authorities need to address the issue of resilience broadly. While the current focus on energy supply is important, it does not do justice to the breadth of the challenges ahead," concludes Ralph Wyss.

Source: Deloitte

This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/wirtschaftliche-grundversorgung-im-krisenfall-weitgehend-gewaehrleistet/

Girls are joining new networks earlier than boys and are thus becoming trendsetters. They are currently making much greater use of TikTok and Pinterest, and in 2014 this was also the case with Instagram. This is shown by the current James study, for which around 1,000 young people aged 12 to 19 are surveyed every two years. "If this trend continues, we will be able to use female use of social networks as an indicator for all young people in the future," says ZHAW researcher and co-study leader Gregor Waller.

Instagram and Snapchat most frequently used

Social networks continue to be among the most important media elements in the everyday lives of young people in Switzerland. Almost all of them use WhatsApp for communication (97 percent of users at least several times a week). In addition, Instagram (81 percent) and Snapchat (76 percent) continue to be used most frequently and have remained stable over the years. A rapid increase can be seen with Tiktok: 67 percent of young people use the platform regularly (2018: 8 percent), with girls using the app more frequently than boys. On the other hand, young people have virtually disappeared from Facebook: only 5 percent still use the network daily or several times a week (2014: 79 percent).

View and like posts

Activities on social networks have remained constant. The most frequent activities are regularly looking at posts by others (56 percent) and liking them (55 percent) or writing personal messages via chat (57 percent). Young people post their own posts much less frequently, and when they do, it tends to be time-limited stories or snaps.

Video games remain popular: 79 percent play at least occasionally, with boys gaming significantly more often (93 percent) than girls (65 percent). Compared to previous years, however, the number of girls gaming has increased. In addition, younger young people are more likely to play games than older young people. Free games are played most frequently (60 percent). Paid video games, on the other hand, are used by only 35 percent. The number of young people who regularly make in-game purchases has more than doubled in two years, from 3 percent to the current 8 percent.

Careless about privacy

When it comes to protecting their privacy online, young people are becoming more careless: Whereas ten years ago 84 percent said they had activated the relevant settings on social networks, this figure has now fallen to just 60 percent. Concerns about others being able to see personal information online have decreased further (2012: 38 percent; 2022: 28 percent). At the same time, however, the majority of young people tend to behave cautiously on social networks and reveal little about themselves in public.

Here there is more information about the study.