Tag: Groupon

Out with the self check-out!

Albertson is your store. No wonder you just walked in, took the items, and walked out (after paying the machines).

http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/officehours/2011/jul/12/albertsons-will-take-self-checkout-lanes-out-stores-doesnt-affect-area-albertsons-stores/

I still remember having lunch at Woolworth, or stopping at full-serve  stations back East.

“coffee refill?” ” oil check?” We are heading toward a self-serve nation (or as in a recent feature in the WSJ, a Retail applicant outsourced his job search to an online resume service in India. The service uses automated software that sent his resumes to, among other things, adult entertainment companies.)

Back to customer service.

Not only customers bring friends, they are also an important part in the feedback loop (for future product development and marketing).

Face time is important. And productive face time is expensive.

Even in our hyper-connected world, people are still isolated and lonely.

The neighborhoods have changed. Old friends have moved on.

So we bowl and golf alone.

We time shift, LinkedIn with people who start their days when we end ours.

The last thing a tired worker needs is to argue with or be harassed by a machine “put your item in the bin”? I thought I did (I found out there was a scale underneath, so leave your bag there, not on the floor).

Meanwhile, I-phones, cosmetic items and travel kits are sold via vending machines.

I can understand the necessity of acquiring these in a hurry, let’s say in an airport.

But neighborhood groceries should foster a sense of community, where we look someone in the eyes, or start a quick conversation (weather, news event, or just venting).

On Charlie Rose, Stephanopoulos said when he interviewed people, he observed their silence, their non-verbal communication.

We still walk around inside our bodies. And we will send our signals via facial muscles and body gestures.

This means we still need a person on the receiving end to decode.

Yes, it’s expensive. But, it’s worth it.

Nordstrom and Four Seasons know this.

Giving people what they want, how they want it. While technology enhances efficiency, a customer-centric organization always wins and keep its customers. Maybe, I should skip the automated resume-blasting company.

Why relying on poor salesmanship to sell me, when I can do it better and save money. Out with the mechanistic transaction (we already got Amazon), and in with “Hi, how is your day?”.

Time to read

There is a time to listen and a time to read.

That time is now. At lunch or in line.

The WSJ runs a a picture of an “early adopter” (old lady wrapped herself in a good book, digital that is).

For her, what a lifetime that was: out of the house to go to work (with sandwich bread), maybe as a telephone dispatcher, then came home to TV dinners with a Chevy in the driveway. Meanwhile, the Maytag man took care of her laundry and her husband the lawn.

Now she has retired, reading a book which is resided in the cloud, while keeping in touch with relatives on Facebook.

(I should mention the Pill).

Reading time has always been hard to come by. It’s at the top of the pyramid of chores (shopping, cooking, cleaning etc…). Now, reading is readily available as the headline news you see everywhere (when I was hooked on “the girl with a dragon tatoo”, I wished I had a comparable service so I could access my bookmark anywhere).

It’s interesting to see if readership increases as a result of better access.

Or it’s more profitable just to sell picks and pans for another Gold Rush.

One thing is for sure. Those so-called Independent Book Stores will join the fate of Independent Telephone companies of last century i.e. giving ways to an oligarchy of heavy weights. Too bad Google ebooks couldn’t be renamed with an “A”, as in Apple, Amazon and ATT.

But by its colorful logo, we already got the idea that the company is into creativity, colorful-ness and cloud-orientation. At least, it got an A as in Algorithm which suggests your next book, even before the title becomes available. It’s an age of “cognitive surplus”.

Everything is just the tip of the iceberg. 1 per cent visible, 99 percent invisible.

Time for reflection. A time to die, a time to live.

 

supply chain dilemma

First they outsourced to lower the cost of, let’s say, an I phone.

The guy (Chinese farm-to-factory worker) if not jumped out of the window from a Foxconn‘s dorm, wished he had because there was no way he could afford one. Even his counterparts in NYC had to get in line just to hand carry the same phone back to China for a profit.

Meanwhile, leaders are scratching their heads, trying to turn that same worker into a domestic consumer. So, he needs and wants a raise. Wage increases drive up production costs, making it less affordable for emerging domestic market.

Or, because of the innovator’s dilemma, product cycle, market adoption and planned obsolescence, consumers taste moves on to Galaxy etc…just as you adjusted your production strategy (Dell just-in-time, then went Retail, then went private).

It’s hard for young people in China and Vietnam not to want an I Phone. It’s harder to keep their wages down while aspiration is up. Meanwhile, the US needs jobs here at home. The same with European countries which can offer quality workmanship (even though for years, they haven’t had a decent manufacturing order to practice their skills ).

For IT outsourcing and cloud computing, it’s easy to “follow the sun”. But for manufacturing it is hard to pick up and move, then move back. Two trends seem to recently emerge in the US: resource-sharing (ride and facility), and reshoring.

A few workers jumped out of the window in China signals the beginning of many  to follow elsewhere.  Remember we live in an interconnected interdependent world where one-upmanship now spans the globe (Indian IT workers are seen partying just like counterparts in Silicon Valley during Happy Hour).

One CEO is nominated CEO of the Year (Netflix), two CEO’s going bankrupt (Blockbuster and MGM).

I got a Sixth Sense. I see dead people. The time, they are a’ changin.  The guy who hummed it (Bob Dylan) was featured in a WSJ article as slipping due to aging.

We got enough worries about the ever expanded and contracted cycles of long-tail product but short-term people.

Ford was quite correct to make the model T’s affordable to his workers (whose wages were quit high). That seemed to put the dilemma to rest in his time. Times, they are a changin, since Model T to I phone. Quite a gulf to cross from creators to consumers.