Archives tagged: retail

Fixed vs. Variable Pricing

By Kyle T. Westra October 30, 2018

Home Page Text Tailoring price according to willingness to pay is theoretically sound but culturally still questionable. It’s important to determine how your customers will react to such variable pricing when deciding whether to have price variance, and by what characteristics.

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The Decline and Fall of Sears

By James T. Berger October 30, 2018

Sears was once the greatest retail employer in the nation. It was both the Walmart and Amazon of its day. But, the end of the 20th century brought the beginning of the retail icon’s end.

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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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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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Pricing in the Age of Machine Learning – Hype v. Reality

By Tim J. Smith, PhD June 28, 2018

At some point, we must separate hype from reality. Concurrently, we can also reduce confusion created by terms like “data scientist,” “wisdom of crowds,” and “machine learning” with clarity and plain language.

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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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Strategic Movements: June 2018

By Tim J. Smith, PhD June 28, 2018

With new competitors Norwegian Air Shuttle and JetBlue Airways entering the market, and the addition of smaller 200-seat planes, capacity on transatlantic flights has grown by more than 20% since 2013. That is comparable to a 4% capacity increase year for the past five years. Did demand increase at this rate as well?  Expect pricing pressure to increase as new entrants attempt to muscle their way in.

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Brits Give Insight Into Toys ‘R Us Failure

By James T. Berger April 26, 2018

Another retail consultant Steve Dresser is also quoted in the BBC article: “Even if they (Toys R Us) didn’t want to give over their stores to the kinds of hands-on experience that you get in Hamleys or a Lego store, they should have done more to keep customers happy, been less functional, more on-trend.

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Amazon Prime

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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dollar general

Dollar General Looks Good Today. Will Tomorrow Be Different?

By Tim J. Smith, PhD March 26, 2018

From a business strategy standpoint, Dollar General has positioned themselves to avoid direct competition with Amazon and Walmart, having successfully demonstrated a way to deal with the duopoly’s increasing presence in the retail market.

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