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Drive Your Business with Marketing Dashboards [13]

[You can drive your business or be driven out of business.  B.C. Forbes]
                               Reprinted with permission of InetSoft Technology, Piscataway, NJ, www.inetsoft.com
The late Ed Koch, a former New York City mayor, always asked, “How am I doing?” Marketers — as well as government leaders — need to know if their “customers” are happy. Perhaps you head the marketing operations for your company and want to get a better handle on customer metrics. You heard about the idea of a marketing dashboard at a recent trade association meeting and think that may solve your problem. How should you proceed? What should be on your dashboard?  Progressing beyond a single item to monitor the effectiveness of business performance, leading organizations often use a set of key metrics called marketing dashboards to understand their key performance indicators. Just as an automobile dashboard captures critical driving information such as speed, distance, fuel levels, vehicle and engine temper…
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Pricing Revisited - Balancing Gains and Losses by Bill Johnson * [12]

People generally fear losses more than they covet gains; losses are weighted more heavily than an equivalent amount of gains, e.g., the absolute joy felt in finding $50 is a lot less than the absolute pain caused by losing $50, a phenomenon known as “loss-aversion”.  Kahneman and Tversky stumbled upon loss aversion after giving their students a simple survey, which asked whether or not they would accept a variety of different bets. The psychologists noticed that, when people were offered a gamble on the toss of a coin in which they might lose $20, they demanded an average payoff of at least $40 if they won. The pain of a loss was approximately twice as potent as the pleasure generated by a gain. As Kahneman and Tversky aptly put it, “In human decision making, losses loom larger than gains.” If you ever kept a gym membership long after it has become clear that you are not now and will never be a gym rat, then you have felt the effects (i.e. “dead-loss” effect) of loss aversion. Think ab…
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Co-creation of Value - Collaborating with Customers [11]

[Co-creation is the purposeful action of partnering with strategic customers, partners or employees to ideate, problem solve, improve performance, or create a new product, service or business. Christine Crandell]

Customer focus no longer means just researching current and future needs to design expected or desire goods or service. A rising trend in business today is co-creating value with customers. Value is created when product and buyer come together within a particular use situation. Examples include retailers getting the customer involved in the shopping experience to save time (Home Depot’s self-checkout) or costs (IKEA’s assembly and delivery by customers), smart phone personalization through app selection, Dell’s online built-to-order computers, and management consultants collaborating with clients to add value in research projects. As the table below explains, co-creation of value has a dual emphasis on the customer and company as value creators. 

Value Creation and Marketing Op…
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Using Mobile Devices in the Retail Store by Suri Weisfeld-Spolter * [10]

Use of mobile devices has become commonplace for contemporary retail shoppers.  At their fingertips, consumers can easily obtain lots of information to aid their shopping efforts and decisions. This phenomenon has been a challenge for some marketers; for others, a benefit.  For instance, brick-and-mortar retailers have announced store closings (e.g., Macy’s in 2016 and early 2017), dissolution (e.g., Limited’s elimination of its store format in 2016 ), or corporate layoffs (e.g., WalMart in 2017), as their financial metrics are upended through e-commerce. At the same time, e-tailers have parlayed their technological competencies to embrace technologically-savvy buyers. Witness Alibaba’s acute aspirations to become a worldwide e-marketer and Amazon’s tremendous expansion of the breadth and depth of its offerings as well as recent establishment of its own global delivery service. Retail salespeople have traditionally been providers of information for customers. Indeed, until the advent a…
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Image Positioning - Differentiate to Communicate Value [9]

[Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends. Walt Disney]




American society is intrigued by image. Consider this related word – imagine. Disney is all about the customer experience and emotionally and magically transports guests to another time or place. Image is often associated with entertainment, fashion, and technology markets. Corporate image is the reputation of an organization viewed by its various stakeholders – investors, employees, customers, business partners, communities, etc. All companies have a singular corporate personality that differentiates them from their rivals. The communication challenge is to manage and enhance the firm’s identity over time.
A perceived image is based on two components: 1) what the company does and says, and 2) what the customers/market say about the organization - this is more important. Companies must manage a strong IMC (integrated marketing communications) program consisting of advertising, selling, sale…
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A Customer Value Mindset in Asia’s Airlines Business by Michael Santonino * [8]

Photos by Michael D. Santonino III/Kim Pei Lu travel photography
Asian airports are transforming the airlines industry by creating value for customers in convenience, availability, and access with a multitude of services. The top airports in the world offer customers a travel experience with a “Disney-like” park feeling as airports display picturesque rainforest waterfalls, lush landscape, open glass designs, cultural artwork, sustainable operations, luxurious amenities, connectivity, and selection of dining and shopping preferences for passengers. Airports (and airlines) are creating value in the Now Economy with Speed, Service, Solutions, Selection, and Sociability (the 5-S model) in many Asian countries (i.e. Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong). 
The United States with its aging airport infrastructure has not been a passenger’s preferred choice in comparison to these Asian countries airports, as many of the service quality performance measures used by …
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