Those who know me (or regularly read this blog) will know that I am a petrolhead – this is from both the car perspective and the business perspective of the car industry. This blog explores a bit of both. In the UK Audi have largely stuck with the Vorsprung Durch Technik slogan for many years, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Following the previous post here it is interesting to see the responses from organisations in terms of service issues with the cold weather currently affecting the UK. I have had two different scenarios today, the first being an item which I ordered over a week ago which was despatched by the supplier but has sat […]
It is many people’s dream – buying a product which is named after them, people will often pay a premium for personalisation at this level. Some people even change their name to show allegiance to their favourite products (is that why he is called Meat Loaf?). However it does seem that not everyone is happy […]
Toyota have been in the news a lot over the past week with publicity about the international recall of vehicles potentially affected by sticking accelerator pedals. It has been an interesting issue of managing corporate reputation during a crisis situation so I thought I would share some of my thoughts about it. There have been […]
In a House of Commons Science and Technology Committee enquiry the professional standards director for Boots, Paul Bennett may have had a Gerald Ratner moment, telling the committee that Boots have no scientific evidence that Homeopathic remedies work, but they sell them because customers want to buy them. Gerald Ratner is infamous for his remark […]
As an avid fan of motorsport I have been following the recent investigation into alleged cheating by the Renault F1 team. Whilst there are many issues at stake in this, not all of which are as logical as the FIA as governing body of Formula One would like us to believe, one thing which is […]
