On a recent flight to attend a gift show, I discovered that my seat-mate had paid less than half the amount for her airfare than I had paid for mine.  Welcome to the world of dynamic pricing! Technically dynamic pricing means that the price of an item is determined by a specific customer’s ability to… Read More


Curling Cues    Of all the winter Olympic sports, curling has to be one of the least popular. And yet pictures of the Norwegian curling team are being eagerly shared all over the world on Facebook and other online media.  Why? Because their uniforms are so… Colorful. Controversial. Clashing. And totally unrelated to curling, when it… Read More


When the founder of Lauerman’s Department Store in Marinette, WI died,  author Michael Leannah reports that “thousands of people — rich and poor, of all faiths and of every rank and class — visited his home to pay their respects.  Flags throughout the city were flown at half-mast, and many stores and institutions remains closed… Read More


VISION CASTING    Do you have a vision for where your store will be in six years?  Many of us are too tied up with the day-to-day busyness of business to think as far as the end of the week, to say nothing of the end of the decade.  But the year 2020 will be here… Read More


What is your store’s conversion rate? We’re not talking missionary work, but rather the number of visitors to your store or web site who are turned into paying customers.  It is relatively easy to measure your conversion rate online, given the sophisticated tracking tools available on the web, while tracking the percentage of shoppers who… Read More


"The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior" is a popular mantra in the psychology world. Whether it is true that you can predict an individual’s future actions based on their past may be debatable — but in business, it seems to be true that our customers buying patterns are predictable enough that we… Read More


Blogs can be a great source of inspiration and information (which is hopefully why you’re reading this one). But have you thought about ways to make use of bloggers in your area to promote your business?  We recently hosted a blogger competition, and were pleased by the response. Hopefully you could make it work for… Read More


Your staff is probably giving its all during the month of December (for many of us, the rest of the year is training camp and this is our competitive season).  Don’t forget to say thank you for their hard work! There are lots of creative ways to give them a reward at the end of… Read More


Customer service complaints aimed at Walmart seem to be at an all-time high this year.  "A negative experience can leave a bad taste in a customer’s mouth for a long time," Grant Cardone reports in this interview about Walmart’s recent decline in staff (and inventory) levels with Ashley Lutz of Business Insider — a timely… Read More


As of May of this year, 63% of adult cell owners use their phones to go online, and 34% mostly access the internet on their phone, according to a recent Pew Internet survey.  Almost 75% use their phone to get directions, and according to Constant Contact, 43% of all e-mail is opened on a phone. This… Read More