A news piece on the BBC website today – Current account switching to be hassle-free – relating to new processes to make it easier for bank current account customers to switch accounts is interesting in terms of customer loyalty and banks. Many of us stick with the same bank for many years, transacting many times a month […]
Price is always an interesting and complex area for marketers to deal with and get right but today I saw an example which shows how price isn’t always proportional to the amount of product received. At a mainline rail station and wanting some water to drink I looked at one of the station vendors and […]
What I know about football as a sport could be written on the back of a small postage stamp but I do take a passing interest in the business side. However, over the last few days it has been impossible to ignore the news in relation to the on pitch actions of Liverpool player Louis […]
When visiting offices with car parks there is often an indication of the importance of visitors (very often customer) by where reserved spaces are for them. Nearly everywhere I have been recently has had the visitor spaces nearest the door, indicating that the organisation sees visitors as important and wants to make it easy for […]
Another organisation has had its corporate reputation hit today, this time by something which should and could have been easily avoided. TalkTalk have been fined £750,000 by Ofcom for making an excessive number of abandoned and silent calls. This is about the calls we have almost all received – the phone rings but there is […]
Apparently one in five Which? members have bought an own-label product thinking they were picking up the branded product. Is this something you have done? The investigation could certainly lead manufacturer brands to consider if the own-brand products are “passing off”, undermining their reputation. The retailers questioned about this claim that they are selling products in […]
One area I often discuss when teaching the CIM Chartered Postgraduate Diploma, especially the Emerging Themes unit, is collaboration between competing organisations to develop products. The reason for doing this is to save costs on areas where differentiation is not important and no advantage will be gained by any party involved but cost saving can […]
Back in February 2010 I wrote a blog post about Toyota (link here) and their corporate reputation which at the time was suffering from large amounts of adverse publicity due to alleged problems with many cars sold. Since then Toyota have suffered from other issues which were not at all related to their own actions […]
Amazon have just announced what appears to be a great differentiator in a crowded market which should give a more compelling proposition to customers. Only available in the US at the moment but they are offering a free cloud based mp3 version of music customers have bought on CD from Amazon since they started business […]
It seems that 3D printing has moved on since our last blog post on the subject link here 3D Printer manufacturer MakerBot Industries has opened a shop to allow people to see the printers and technology available, read more here or watch a short video here These printers have great possibilities for marketers of physical products […]
This is a fascinating infographic about what makes good bosses in the UK, and who people think would be good bosses: Infographic by Reed Global
There is a great discussion about leadership and management in a recent edition of the Radio Four programme, The Bottom Line – the podcast can be downloaded hereThis could be really useful for CIM students on the Professional Diploma Managing Marketing unit and Chartered Postgraduate Diploma Marketing Leadership and Planning unit. Get listening!
