In a recent INFORMS Marketing Science article, Arun Gopalakrishnan of Rice University and his colleagues completed a study based on a national hair salon regarding the impact of a simple loyalty program. The big surprise to Professor Gopalakrishnan was that the loyalty program "didn’t increase the value of this program by getting people to go to the stores more often or spend more money on their visits, the main upside of the program was it got people to stick around with the firm as opposed to walking out and taking their business to other competitors."...
Charlie Goetz, Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School provides great tips for start-ups in this 20 minute podcast....
Last week, I stumbled upon two articles that stuck in the back of my mind. Both authors, Roger Martin and Kim Whitler, seem to asking the same question - why is marketing relegated to a secondary / support role at so many organizations when it is of strategic importance? Read more of my thoughts and find the links to these excellent articles in the full post....
This article explains how to gain advantage over your competitors through your relationship with and understanding of your current and target customers. Tom Kinnear, Marketing Professor at Michigan and author of several MBTN modules, called this "Bringing the Customer In". ...