Cereal Boxes as Platforms
An interview from a few months ago where Mark Addicks – chief marketing officer of General Mills – discusses the future of the cereal box. The line that caught my attention, “the wonderful world of packaging, a cereal box, which a lot of people love some of the most well read print material in the […]
Are Daily Deals Another Bubble?
Daily deals were all the rage in 2011. Groupon – the leader in the daily deal space – went public last year to much fanfare. The November IPO raised $700 million and valued the company at $12.8 billion at the time. It was the largest IPO by a Web company since Google went public. A […]
Is Apple Winning the Enterprise?
Good Technology is a privately-held company which offers a mobile solution for corporate and government clients. The core offerings include email, calendar, and secure mobile access to applications and company data. While the customer base is likely small relative to the entire universe of tablets and smartphones and many end-users are likely bringing personal, mobile […]
Shrinking the Supply Chain – How Technology Consolidates What we Get and When We Get It
One thing heavily overlooked is how technology shrinks the supply chain. By supply chain I mean in the broadest and most general sense how a product or service is ultimately delivered through to the end user. This morning Fred Wilson wrote about Demand It! From Eventful. With Demand It! the basic concept is simple – users […]
How Quickly Can We Exhaust the Social Security Trust Fund?
Last week the Social Security Trustee Report reported the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2033. Comparing this date with previously released estimated Veronique de Rugy at the Mercatus Center highlights the estimated exhaust date has continued to decline and is now estimated to happen 20 years sooner than estimated in 1990. The chart below […]
Sears expands ‘Scrubology’ shops
Sears Holdings is expanding the availability of its in-store professional apparel shop to 91 Sears and Kmart stores nationwide. Revealing of their core shopper.
Moms Love Tech
A recent NRF study shows about 12.7 percent of consumers plan to buy tech this Mother’s Day. Sixty-six percent plan to buy flowers.
Price – Still the Driving Factor for Purchases
NPD is reporting 85 percent of U.S. consumers say price will be an extremely important/important factor in deciding where to shop in the near future. This is consistent with CEA research that continuously finds price and feature set are the two primary factors influencing purchasing decisions. While other factors – notably environmental-related factors like use of recycled materials […]
On AmEx Sync
Lately, American Express has been very active integrating promotions with social platforms. I first noticed foursquare deals a few months ago and this past week noticed Amex has several Twitter-related promos running. Both leverage Amex’s recently launched (relaunched?) Amex Sync. Essentially, Amex card holders get pre-specified discounts when they perform certain tasks on social platforms (ie […]
Is Square Footage the Issue?
Over the last 2+ years, Wall Street analysts have pounded BestBuy on the size of their big box store fronts. Best Buy recently announced another 42 store closures – bring to 50 the total stores that will shutter in 2012. Best Buy has also worked over the last year to shrink their footprints. In some […]
