Archives tagged: Amazon

Strategic Movements: October 2018

By Tim J. Smith, PhD October 30, 2018

Procter & Gamble announced price increases for Pampers and Bounty in July 2018. Kimberly-Clark similarly announced price increases for Huggies and Viva in August 2018.  Both cite inflationary cost pressures specifically pulp. Monitoring competitive price moves is good business intelligence. Watch out for inflation 2018

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Are You Raising Prices Fast Enough?

By Tim J. Smith, PhD September 29, 2018

Learning from companies in other countries, we find common imperatives to undertake in response to price volatility. These imperatives are related to building the organizational ability to flexibly adjust prices in response to changing market environment.

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Amazon the Kingmaker

By Kyle T. Westra September 29, 2018

Amazon’s Choice began as a solution for its Echo home device, which, when prompted by a user to buy an item not previously purchased, needed to know what to get. But its increasing presence in Amazon search results illustrates a problem with those results: there are simply too many.

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What I’ve Learned From Three Years in Pricing

By Kyle T. Westra August 23, 2018

Traditionally, pricing is considered one of the Four Ps of Marketing, along with product, promotion, and place. But thinking about pricing as simply a subset of marketing is a mistake.

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What are “Ironclad” Brands and How to Maintain Them

Polarization of Politics Having an Effect on Brand Management

By James T. Berger August 23, 2018

Trump has an ultra-loyal 35-40% of the electorate who will follow him anywhere. On the other hand, the anti-Trumpers have an equal or greater percentage of the population that feels exactly the opposite.

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The New Invisible Hand: Five Revolutions in the Digital Economy

Whither Middlemen?

By Kyle T. Westra July 30, 2018

Middlemen make for an easy target for disgruntled customers and observers of the economy. At times it can be unclear how they are adding value to a transaction. Sometimes it looks like middlemen are simply inserting themselves into a transaction to increase costs and take a cut.

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The New Invisible Hand: Five Revolutions in the Digital Economy

The Pitfalls of Dynamic Pricing

By Kyle T. Westra June 28, 2018

In my upcoming book, preliminarily titled The New Invisible Hand, I’ll explore the most important technological trends affecting pricing and commercial strategy. One chapter will focus specifically on this issue: unpacking the promise and perils of dynamic pricing.

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Barnes & Noble Looking Like Latest Victim of Retail Maelstrom

By James T. Berger June 28, 2018

Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University, also believes the end of B&N is inevitable. “This is late stage demise,” said Cohen. “They were the last man standing in a sense in the traditional brick-and-mortar space, but hey just haven’t figured out how to become relevant. Too little. Too late.”

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When and How to Automate

By Kyle T. Westra May 23, 2018

Software is good at automating repeatable processes, but that doesn’t make them the right processes. Doing the wrong thing efficiently isn’t the same as doing the right thing. There’s a reason that Peter Drucker wrote about the effective, not the efficient, executive.

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Will Nordstrom Survive the Amazon/Walmart Duopoly Onslaught?

By Tim J. Smith, PhD March 26, 2018

As Amazon and Wal-Mart continue to dominate e-commerce, Nordstrom has been faced with a unique challenge of growing its own e-commerce presence, and continuing to promote its differentiators against this duopoly.

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