BizReport says more people paid their bills online than by check for the first time. Sorta like salsa outselling ketchup - had to happen sooner or later.
Yep, another of those "you can have any two of the three" type scenarios (quality-service-price) is out. Of course, if you position yourself in the middle, no one will even know you are there. You can find it at Branding & Marketing.
Some research reported on Marketing & Strategy Innovation says if the product or service is complex, give the buyer a simple reason to go with you. On the other hand, simple products and services need more complex approaches - mainly to separate that product or service from the herd. One thing I did not see in this summary of the research was the amount of decision-making as dictated by the cost of the buy.
I'll have to look for this one as was reported by It's a Pleasure. Evidently, Sam Adams challenged some home brewers to enter a contest to develop some beer that would be suitable under the Sam Adams' brand. A six-pack gives you three different beers to try. Additionally, they point to another site indicating that this beer group is developing special glassware to enhance the beer experience. My word, the snobbery of it all. Beer drinkers willing to look and sound like winos. And that glass? It looks like a coke bottle that went to Gold's Gym or went on steroids. Four for $30. What's next? Miler going back to the "Champaign of Beer" and serving it in your favorite champaign glass? A different set of four glasses for lagers, for ales, for pale ales, top or bottom fermented? The mind boggles.
I'm putting a couple of ads in this post that are obliquely related. The first deals with one of the points that I make about health in developing countries and the problems of clean water. This ad addresses, not the workers, but the children who are the victims. Found at brand curve.
The second ad is about global warming. This particular as points out something very important. Hope the folks in the "ark" are paying attention. Found at ADpunch.
Cool Hunting links to a surfboard with lights in the rails, fin(s) and logo. Really cool for the early or late surfer.
At one point, not all that many years ago, the US was number one in broadband. Then, because the US could not set a national policy for growing the web, we started falling off the pace. Too many political axes to grind to get together and do something that would benefit the nation. In 2001, according to a Free Press article, we were in fourth place - out of the money. Six months ago, we fell back to 12th place. Can you imagine? Now, the US can't even see the leaders because the dust in our 15th place eyes. Pathetic. Especially for a nation that prides itself on what it can do. Is part of the problem the "blue sky" rates we pay -- 10 times as much as the leaders who pay US$1 per Mbps? Is this backward march in broadband penetration symptomatic of the
nation's failure to want to lead bad enough to get off out collective
asses and do something about it? Is this the same principle operating
that now sees GM kowtowing to Toyota? Are these symptoms of the US turning into a third-rate nation?
Every once in awhile, I run into something that is so simple and elegant that it shows us just sticking to the bare necessities can make a wonderful promotion. Thanks to advertising for peanuts for the link to Miranda's site.
Brilliant!
On the other side of the story: San Diego Roots & Music Festival
Gee willikers, I caught a link to 1to1 Weekly and an article about measuring customer satisfaction internationally. Difficult? You bet and that is usually part of IB101's cultural coverage. Seems like that lesson, that I was first taught back in the mid-80s, was lain below the radar of Satmetrix who publishes this like it is some new and wonderful discovery. Seems like their entire management team must never have taken a single course in International Business or they would have known about this.
Here's Satmetrix:
"survey responses across different geographic and cultural borders cannot directly be compared with one another" No kidding! Hell, you can not always compare them across distinct cultural/geographic lines right here in the US.
The article goes downhill from there delving into market research bafflegab and generalities. Here's an example: "customers in Latin America seem to have a tendency to inflate their professed satisfaction and loyalty relative to other areas of the world, while Japanese customers tend to return lower scores. Middle Eastern respondents usually offer higher scores than their nearby counterparts in Europe and Asia. Just knowing each of these trends in isolation is of little help, however, because there can still be legitimate operational issues at play. 'Are scores lower in Japan because the business practices are not as optimized in that region, or because cultural biases are different?'" Nowhere is the "why" really discussed other than these generalities. Perhaps, were the research really explained, it would mention things like: Mexican respondents gave higher scores due to the culture's not wanting to say "no" or to criticize things, especially work as it is not easily separated from the person - such that to say the job was not good is tantamount to telling the person they are not good. They just do not separate work from themselves like we do in the US.
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