So, after finishing my MBA recently I have been looking back at some great post's from a very well known man who is well deserving of the notoriety, Seth Godin. I have heard him speak personally, watched several video presentations, begun but not finished yet a couple of his books, and am thankful for his contributions to our business society and the common knowledge base. So, as a resource I am clipping and posting a few links to some recent favorites from Mr Godin's blog.
The future of the library
How to be interviewed
The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
More to come shortly.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Saturation
How many is too many? I remember last semester in class we had the discussion with our Dean about his work with a certain company and the discussion was centered around the fad or trend within the frozen yogurt industry. We wondered then and I still wonder now if the fad of frozen yogurt isn't going to be short lived.
This isn't to say that some money isn't to be had in the mean time by those who want to get in the industry through cheap franchise buy in fees compared to the typical restaurant start up cost. I wonder how many surveys and market study's were done by these owners or if they just had a hunch and went with it hoping it might pay off.
According to the business life cycle, Fresh Berry for instance, who was the first "new" style frozen yogurt companies to hit the scene, has added products to the choices to help draw people in for more than just the cold choice.of frozen yogurt. I know that from this authors perspective, we do go to the frozen yogurt places more in the spring and summer as it warms up. In the business life cycle as you approach the maturity of one product or business strategic choices must be made to either market differently, find a new market to develop or penetrate one that you are presently in. There of course see other options such as adding new relates or unrelated products to diversify and not put all the eggs in one basket. So it would seem that Fresh Berry here in Tulsa particularly is trying to diversify so as to lower risk and forge the rivers filled with the many other yogurt ships in the market place.
Here is an article that talks about this from this morning's Tulsa World.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=46&articleid=20110313_46_E1_CUTLIN260738
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Staying in your core
Well, I have made it through the first phase of my Strategic Management MBA class and am truly enjoying the concept of looking from a strategic perspective at how the wants, needs and demands of a market have to be aligned with the core competencies of a business who wants to reach those customers. This morning I got to read an article from my wise professor of Strat about what happens to companies when they decide to stray away from their core competencies.
Here is the link for your reading pleasure: http://fxn.ws/hw84Hu
From a retail product display perspective, I can say that my wife and I have wondered around a few of the new stores with their wider and more open layout and I can say it was VERY frustrating to us as we always knew how to get in, get our stuff, and make it to the customary 10 people deep lines because they never have enough people up front to handle the demand. The know people will generally wait, and so they can save cost of labor having limited number of people there. Flipped from that perspective, my wife and I visited competitor Target the other week, and we approached the lines and there were 6-7 people in 4-5 checkouts, and I could hear over some radio's "Please send all available help to the front to assist" and within moments there were 4-5 more checkout lanes available and we were out of there within a matter of minutes. That experience and customer based approach stuck with me. I feel like Wal-Mart HAS strayed from being customer focused for the best prices and experience, and gone to being the profit driven machine that it is today. Wal-Mart needs to make a shift, it's just a matter of how quickly that shift will show up in their EPS and Net Income.
Here is the link for your reading pleasure: http://fxn.ws/hw84Hu
In this article Wal Mart- the retail giant is said to have left the founding purposes and core that the founder Sam Walton built it upon. If you ask the general person on the street, what is Wal-Mart known for, they would likely tell you "Lower Prices." And yet, Wal Mart has taken a strategic approach to introduce items that are higher priced, and to even increase prices on some items while lower prices on others. With the amount of volume that comes through their stores, I am not sure how they, they being the executive strategic team, would think that consumers would not notice. As part of my first project, we were dealing in the beverage industry, specifically with Coca Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPS). Clearly the big two players in the market are Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. However all three state in their financial reports that Wal-Mart is one of their big customers. Both DPS and if I recall, KO stated that they had been dealing with some pricing and advertising discrepencies with Wal-Mart but those had been resolved in the 2010 year and shelf space and location of retail displays were being cleared up. It makes me wonder if the beverage and snacking industries (PepsiCo) are being hit with pricing shifts by one of the most well leveraged and well positioned retail corporations today, what their true market strategy is.
As we found in our project, Coca Cola's most critical core Competency is their brand. The "Coke" or "Coca Cola" brand is globally known. This I think ties with one of my previous blogs about Starbucks and since that post I can see that this kind of brand recognition is possibly what they are after within their Coffee and food industry. So, if Wal-Mart brand is known to be value based and a strong Cost-leadership corporation, then they tried to differentiate with certain product lines and they flopped completely.
From a retail product display perspective, I can say that my wife and I have wondered around a few of the new stores with their wider and more open layout and I can say it was VERY frustrating to us as we always knew how to get in, get our stuff, and make it to the customary 10 people deep lines because they never have enough people up front to handle the demand. The know people will generally wait, and so they can save cost of labor having limited number of people there. Flipped from that perspective, my wife and I visited competitor Target the other week, and we approached the lines and there were 6-7 people in 4-5 checkouts, and I could hear over some radio's "Please send all available help to the front to assist" and within moments there were 4-5 more checkout lanes available and we were out of there within a matter of minutes. That experience and customer based approach stuck with me. I feel like Wal-Mart HAS strayed from being customer focused for the best prices and experience, and gone to being the profit driven machine that it is today. Wal-Mart needs to make a shift, it's just a matter of how quickly that shift will show up in their EPS and Net Income.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Starbucks Coffee....or just a mermaid
So I have just come upon news that Starbucks has made the "strategic decision" to drop the "Starbucks Coffee" from it's logo and just go with the green and white contrasted mermaid/greek siren logo for it's signs, cups, and all form of branding. I for one, as a Gold Card member and frequent customer of our local fill up spots, am not in favor of the changes.
When I say the company name "Starbucks" what is the first word that generally comes to mind? Coffee..right? And if I am selling breakfast sandwiches or donuts or muffins with the coffee drink, would I rather be known for the sandwiches, which McDonald's, QT, and BK all have variations of, or the point of differentiation which is the Starbucks coffee experience. I am currently beginning my last semester in my MBA program and am in the class Graduate Strategic Management. One of our discussion points in the first few classes has centered around alignment of resources with the needs, wants, demands of the customers to form the core competencies. Starbucks seems to have a core competency as being the coffee company of choice. And the CEO Mr Shultz states that in his video, but actions do speak louder than words. McDonald's in recent years has brought the McCafe in to compete in direct competition to Starbucks and I wonder if Starbucks realizes that by taking away the Coffee from it's branding it in some ways is taking the focus off of the very thing that created them to be who they are today.
When I say the company name "Starbucks" what is the first word that generally comes to mind? Coffee..right? And if I am selling breakfast sandwiches or donuts or muffins with the coffee drink, would I rather be known for the sandwiches, which McDonald's, QT, and BK all have variations of, or the point of differentiation which is the Starbucks coffee experience. I am currently beginning my last semester in my MBA program and am in the class Graduate Strategic Management. One of our discussion points in the first few classes has centered around alignment of resources with the needs, wants, demands of the customers to form the core competencies. Starbucks seems to have a core competency as being the coffee company of choice. And the CEO Mr Shultz states that in his video, but actions do speak louder than words. McDonald's in recent years has brought the McCafe in to compete in direct competition to Starbucks and I wonder if Starbucks realizes that by taking away the Coffee from it's branding it in some ways is taking the focus off of the very thing that created them to be who they are today.
I AM interested to learn more about what drove the company to this decision and how they think that this will be a point of strategic growth for them. Here is the link to the full story on a Forbes.com blog: http://bit.ly/dXtgGv and the new logo:
Also here is the link to the post by the CEO about the change.
Happy Coffee drinking-
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