A faster horse

“If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’.” – Henry Ford For me there are two lessons to take away from this famous quotation. First, of course customers have a hard time articulating precisely what they want. Few customers are inventors. But if you listen carefully you can hear [...]

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Let’s get digital…digital

The first wave of digital retail was either about brands with a history in catalog merchandising putting up a basic e-commerce site (Williams-Sonoma, Lands’ End) or pure-plays picking off products categories that early adopters could readily embrace (Amazon). The market dealt harshly with models that could not execute a basic direct-to-consumer formula, targeted a product [...]

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Reset! Engaging Customers in the New Normal

If you missed the webinar that Jon Giegengack and I conducted earlier this week entitled Engaging Consumers and Growing Market Share in the “New Normal,” the recording of the session and presentation deck are now both available. Webinar recording: https://cmbinfoevents.webex.com/cmbinfoevents/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=2764867&rKey=b264f15e93796eb1 Webinar deck: http://www.cmbinfo.com/cmb-cms/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/The-New-Consumer-Report_2010.pdf

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Expensive & Lousy Meets Free & Excellent

I just got back from Chicago where I spoke at the annual Shopper Insights in Action conference.  It was a great trip, but one of the things I will remember the most is a very disappointing experience I had at the host hotel. At this hotel (which shall go nameless, but it rhymes with lariat), [...]

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