Showing 1-17 of 17
Do your opening sentences get people to pay attention? When pitching a start-up idea, you need to get to the core innovation right out of the gate. When making any kind of presentation, a counter-intuitive statement, surprising fact or arresting story can get people to put their phones down.
Traditional marketing practices are increasingly viewed with skepticism. In many organizations, marketers struggle to document the return on investment for expenditures; as a result, marketing has less influence in the boardroom — and marketing is viewed as a questionable cost rather than a worthy investment. This article is based on a study that found that certain marketing techniques can influence a company’s stock market valuation — if the techniques increase customer lifetime value.
Want to increase sales of a bundle of goods or services that includes both pleasurable and utilitarian items? Research suggests that a discount will increase sales more effectively if it’s offered on the pleasurable item.
Jonathan Byrnes, Senior Lecturer at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics.
Imagine if you could make your organization more profitable — without the substantial pain that often accompanies significant cost-cutting.
Image courtesy of PepsiCo.
International markets have been increasingly important for many U.S. companies, and they are the assumed priority for future growth. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is representative: In 1998 it obtained 6% of its revenue internationally; by 2008, international revenues constituted 25% of Wal-Mart’s much larger sales base.
advertisement
Information-visualization guru and famed PowerPoint debunker Edward Tufte explains how businesses would think better, make better decisions and present themselves more powerfully if only they would learn to talk — both internally and externally — in facts.
According to Clayton Christensen, the customer is the wrong unit of analysis for innovators to focus on. Instead, focus on the job that customers are trying to get done when they use your product or service.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is a key set of fundamental metrics — which can be actively managed — linking the health of brand to revenue and consumer commitment.
Most companies segment their markets by customer demographics or product characteristics and differentiate their offerings by adding features and functions. But the consumer has a different view of the marketplace. He simply has a job to be done and is seeking to “hire” the best product or service to do it. Marketers must adopt that perspective.
Many companies make incremental improvements to their service offerings, but few succeed in creating service innovations that generate new markets or reshape existing ones. To move in that direction, executives must understand the different types of market-creating service innovations as well as the nine factors that enable these innovations.
advertisement
Many of the ups and downs of a company’s revenue stream can be smoothed out. Doing so, though, requires a fundamental change in how the organization prioritizes its sales activities.
In recent years, firms have turned to non-traditional marketing campaigns to generate buzz about their products and services. Indeed, positive word-of-mouth is anecdotally cited as the secret behind such successes as Chrysler’s PT Cruiser and the revival of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Sellers have a view of their industry that their customers lack. But by sharing their unique knowledge, they can win loyalty and improve their pricing power.
If they wish to achieve profitable, sustainable growth, suppliers seeking a larger share of their customers” wallets need a fine-grained, disciplined approach to getting, leveraging and documenting knowledge about those customers.
Suppliers think social contacts matter a lot — but buyers are much more concerned about prices and switching costs.
advertisement
In the mid-1980s, I purchased my first car (a Honda Civic) and my first personal computer (an IBM PC AT) at about the same time and for about the same price ($6,000 to $7,000; the price of the computer included a monitor and a printer).
Throughout the 1990s, interest in private label brands in the U.S. grocery industry has increased. Store brands currently account for slightly less than 15 percent of total dollar sales.
Showing 1-17 of 17