Sales and marketing

Most companies mistakenly take a one-size-fits-all approach to prices.

A customer-research technique that requires respondents to make a sequence of explicit trade-offs when choosing their preferred product attributes can...

When Ben Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac and the words, “A little neglect may breed great mischief,” he did not have price fixing in mind. To the 47 executives in companies in the folding-box industry convicted of price fixing, however, the words seem tailored to fit. In those companies convicted under antitrust laws in 1976, […]

Using the results of a survey of 380 companies in 34 industries, this author examines three basic types of compensation plans: salary, commission, and combination (salary plus commission). Most companies in the study favored a combination plan, but such plans have some disadvantages to offset their obvious attractiveness. The author sets out the possible reasons […]

And why your company can’t ignore it.

The best stay attuned to their customers’ signals in the social graph.

The Internet promises to give marketing the same boost in productivity that new operational strategies have given to manufacturing.

Career-oriented women are increasingly flexing their spending muscle. Here’s how companies can reach these “Golden Misses.”

Normally, the Olympic Games are a positive force in marketing. Worldwide marketing expenditures increase as official sponsors and unofficial free-riders attach themselves to the Olympic logo, to particular sports, national teams or individual athletes. Global brands, in particular, see the Olympics and World Cup soccer as the two most important international sporting events; brand linkage […]

Many CMOs see their digital future, but still struggle to make the case across the executive ranks.

Leaders must leverage and develop diverse talent in 2014.

Seven reasons companies are reinvesting in TV, radio, and print ads.

While management skills can improve service systems, a manager is better off if he or she first has a clear understanding of the operating characteristics that set one service system apart from another. This author offers one view of services, which, if followed, results in a “rational approach to the rationalization” of services. His view, […]

CEO Tony Hsieh explains why the company moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas.

I wasn’t thrilled. I’d just learned that the trip to NYC that I was taking with my extended family would center on the American Girl store. When I think New York, I think Central Park, Broadway shows, fancy cocktails, and shopping. I’m not a doll person, not now in my 33rd year, or ever. I […]

It's one of the most basic aphorisms of business: The customer is always right. But when companies, especially large ones, try to rectify a service failure,...

On July 3 a New York Federal Judge ordered Google to hand over their complete record of viewers’ behavior, including user names and internet protocol addresses in service, to Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google’s YouTube service. It raises the very interesting question, does Google keep too much information on its users, and […]

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Brands are not just names slapped on products by the marketing department; they embody the value those products have for your customers. That may be more true for high-tech products than it is for soap.

TV without social will be as hard to remember as movies without sound.