Too Many Choices? Research Directions in Consumer Control and Empowerment

Today, consumers exert fuller control over their choices than ever before, a development heralded as greatly empowering for the consumer. But is it possible fro them to have too much control? INSEAD Professors Carmon, Chattopadhyay, Wertenbroch and colleagues pose this and other questions, and describe a set of research directions for understanding the consequences of increased consumer control and the factors that shape … [ Read more ]

Hitting a Nerve

How to figure out what’s really going on in customers’ heads-and generate a burst in demand.

Eye Spy: Visual attention Versus Memory at POP

What draws you towards a particular make of footwear displayed on a store wall? What will be the sales impact of a new shelf display? Where in a shelf should you put your brand and how many facings should it have? To understand consumer decisions at the point of purchase or to measure the performance of POP marketing, Professor Pierre Chandon shows … [ Read more ]

Authors and Experts

Formerly Publicity Depot, Authors and Experts is a membership-based organization ($99(US)a year; $59(US) for six months) that promotes its directory of “expert” speakers, authors and the like to the media. Sign up, and you’ll be placed in the directory organized by topic, category and keyword. Write your own description of why the media should contact you about your product, service, opinion or area of expertise. … [ Read more ]

Online Publisher

Founded in June 2001 by some of the Internet’s leading content brands, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) is an industry trade organization dedicated to representing high-quality online publishers to the advertising community, the press, the government and the public. This is an exciting find for online publishers and advertisers. In particular, there is a new white paper report available at the site on Internet audience … [ Read more ]

Focus on Corporate Governance Requires a Business-Oriented Selling Approach

If you are selling products or services that are critical to your prospect’s success or for that matter, their very survival, your proposal will likely be elevated to the board of directors level for final approval. How do you sell at the board level?

Analytical Paradox – The catch-22 of customer analytics

“The business of customer analytics is to get answers quickly so marketers can leverage newly gleaned information for competitive advantage. Why, then, is it so difficult to get answers to simple questions, let alone the complex ones? Often, marketers are faced with a management report that, instead of answering questions, spawns a thousand different questions. These in turn create requests for new reports or data. … [ Read more ]

Cooling The Branding Iron

Are you a B2B company, putting (or considering putting) significant effort and significant resources into developing a coherent brand for your product? Researching the marketplace and analyzing competing brands? Establishing strategy sessions to review and select the best brand identity?

If you are, you’re probably wasting a lot of time and a lot of money. For the majority of B2B companies, branding is very likely … [ Read more ]

The Eyes Have It!

This article takes a look at how users interact with websites and draws some useful lessons for design and marketing purposes.

infoUSA

To get new customers, you have to do prospecting. To get prospects, especially targeted ones, the easiest route is lists. So how do you find a list of one-armed paperhangers with blue eyes? Well, you don’t. But you can find just about anything else from the list compiling giant infoUSA. These people gather everything from census data, telephone directories and court documents to real estate … [ Read more ]

The Six Forces of Marketing Momentum

If you want your product to be more than a one-hit wonder, customers need to know that it has staying power. Here are six ways to help you convince them, according to Rob Ricci and John Volkmann in this excerpt from their book, Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces.

To Pay or Not to Pay: Measuring Consumer Willingness to Pay in FMCG Markets

Marketers are naturally interested in how much consumers are willing to pay for their goods, and a number of techniques exist to help them do this. Professors Klaus Wertenbroch and Bernd Skiera examine some ways in which market researchers can establish the level of consumers’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets.