tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60461148638243642562010-01-30T10:30:55.341-08:00"Cutting Edge Insights Through Laser-Guided ResearchJoyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-37947797143228927332009-12-02T08:19:00.000-08:002009-12-02T08:19:52.008-08:00

Playboy Enterprises Inc. recentlly announced that they will be outsourcing most of their operations to American Media Inc. in a 5-year partnership deal. Apparently it's not party time anymore at the company Hugh Hefner started (partly with money loaned by his mother). In fact they have seen their margins erode progressively over time. They netted out $2.3MM profits on revenues of $331MM in 2006

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-10625972053350024182009-11-28T10:10:00.000-08:002009-11-28T10:10:28.427-08:00

Black Friday '09 has come and gone and the experts are already making prognostications about the rest of the '09 Holiday Season and the health of the Retail Sector. Talk about opinions being divided- on Yahoo! Finance itself there were two articles posted a day apart taking opposing views- "Early indicators of Black Friday sales promising" and "Black Friday: D-Day for 'Deals' and a 'Dismal'

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-18528550953444025642009-11-22T14:13:00.000-08:002009-11-22T14:13:00.281-08:00

I came across this report from Deloitte “The Shift Index 2009: Industry Metrics and Perspectives” (published November 4, 2009) that takes a deep dive look at Corporate performance across a broad group of industries including Aerospace& Defense, Financial Services Consumer Products and Retail, Technology, Media, Telecommunications, and Automotive. In spite of the vague and cryptic nature of the

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-13203719634002419062009-10-24T21:05:00.000-07:002009-10-24T21:05:04.275-07:00

As Marketing Effectiveness Analytics comes of age, it seems to have been promoted from specialized firms to it's own practice area within Marketing Strategy dvisions of Crème de la Crème of the consulting world and from an esoteric existence within Market Research Departments to the Corporate Boardroom- almost a Cinderella story. Marketing Effectiveness Analytics today is the tool of choice while

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-20294945980282480752009-09-27T13:38:00.000-07:002009-10-09T14:23:20.120-07:00

The core motivation for this Blog was to promote some rigor in business and economic analysis and research. In our posts we had talked about how research is becoming less and less exploratory and more and more confirmatory. I was just reading an article on Yahoo! Real Estate from CNNMoney.com titled "Americans Tame Their Wanderlust". The article is pretty cool as it focuses on domestic migration

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-20893672029677787522009-09-03T10:00:00.000-07:002009-09-03T10:00:28.006-07:00

The Employment Situation Report comes out on Friday September 4th, 2009 at 8:30 A.M. Based on other reports that came out earlier this week, it may go either way vs. expectations. Consensus estimates an average decline of 200,000 in Nonfarm Payrolls. Although the ISM Manufacturing Index came out on September 1st at a very strong at 52.9 vs. a Consensus of 50.5, the Inventories Index was weak,

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-12321164857335576682009-08-17T04:14:00.002-07:002009-08-19T06:46:46.776-07:00

And a little book called MoneyballFollowing up from my last post, I gave my second blog a little time to think itself through. For some reason, I kept thinking about this book while I was listening to Professor Fader's ideas. That set me off on another line of thought. What is marketing research all about? The professor kept talking about the value of conventional wisdom and using information

Amanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599877786885333149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-43895605141511582682009-08-02T17:09:00.000-07:002009-08-02T17:11:52.891-07:00

Over the past year or so a lot of advice has come out from business thought leaders about recessionary pricing strategies. Below are three articles from what are considered to be well-regarded sources:INSEAD: When to push the panic button?Harvard Business School: Marketing Your Way Through a RecessionMcKinsey: Pricing in an inflationary downturnAlthough there's a lot of valuable advice in these

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-17963590587675131402009-06-21T16:07:00.001-07:002009-06-22T10:17:09.516-07:00

A quick survey of key economic indicators for the U.S. Economy may indicate that some of the downward drivers may be paring back more than expected, which could either indicate a reversal may be in the offing or we are on the brink of a double dip recession.Durable Goods Orders: Durable Goods orders are to be released on June 24th and the consensus average is a -0.5% change. Durable Goods orders

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-57648205969794672892009-06-13T17:11:00.000-07:002009-06-13T17:30:48.533-07:00

Why do I have these three themes in one sentence? That is because I think these could shape each other’s future with a little foresight.Transportation is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for a third of all carbon dioxide emission in the U.S. and Canada. Governments the world over are awakening to the fact that irreversible damage is being done to the environment

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-46531079769944383652009-04-08T06:51:00.000-07:002009-04-08T06:57:21.083-07:00

Businesses in the present economy are under pressure as the pace of revenue growth slows down to a crawl, compressing profit margins as revenues barely exceed fixed costs. Of course you can still drive growth through share gains and lower costs by targeting jobs for elimination, but when industry growth is nonexistent, your competitors will protect market-share fighting tooth and nail. Also there

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-3349550951100489672009-01-18T15:05:00.000-08:002009-01-18T15:36:00.896-08:00

I just saw the Hyundai ad that offers to buy back your new Hyundai if within a year of purchase you lose your job- talk about making best out of the situation! They were already pushing the best value for your money line- but this is quite a bold move that for the time-being stands head and shoulders above the rest of the "economic downturn? we are here to rescue" pitches. If it doesn't burn a

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-67498332665806318432008-12-11T11:28:00.001-08:002008-12-11T15:39:36.005-08:00

...or stating the Obvious?Mckinsey Quarterly just put out an article highlighting the need in the current economic scenario for an increased cooperation between business leaders and regulators. The article states that "As concern over global problems mounts, executives and regulators have everything to gain from building relationships based on trust, and developing solutions that benefit a wide

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-85941505467739786312008-12-06T19:47:00.000-08:002008-12-07T09:21:19.488-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to actually attend a lecture by a Wharton professor - Peter Fader - at the Marketing Modelers meeting down at the ARF in NYC. The topic of conversation was "The Paradoxes of Interactive Media". Peter Fader is a professor at the Wharton school of business and is actually on the board of A-list journals such as Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing

Amanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03599877786885333149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-50153195574688515072008-12-04T04:09:00.000-08:002008-12-04T05:01:32.311-08:00

On Friday, November 28, 2008 the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research announced a peak in economic activity in December 2007. Since it is the NBER's sacred and ordained task to announce recession beginings and end, finally everyone including the government can admit that we are in an official recession until the NBER announces a 'trough', signalling the end

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-90755316135272007612008-11-23T18:50:00.001-08:002008-11-23T19:31:36.484-08:00

The last couple of weeks there's this rumor that's been floating around that the Government plans to do away with 401K and replace them with what is being called Guaranteed Retirement Account. The idea apparently originates from an economist, Teresa Ghilarducci, who put forward a paper "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts Toward retirement income security" in November 2007. A year after the paper was

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-18779566447983652012008-11-17T14:58:00.000-08:002008-11-18T12:10:07.379-08:00

I was just reading an article by Jack Neff of AdAge covering P&G "Digital Guru" Ted McConnell. Ted believes that Social Networks like Facebook may never be able to show the ROI on Ad dollars marketers spend on their websites. The article quotes Ted as saying about consumer-generated Media "Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-73705256274420730122008-11-16T07:05:00.000-08:002009-03-23T12:34:50.827-07:00

Innovation is a critical growth driver for most industries, but more so for industries that are mature. Growth industries are less reliant on an ongoing pipeline of innovations because the full potential of the existing portfolio hasn’t been maximized yet, penetration can be further increased and new markets can be expanded into, where success with existing products can be replicated. Products

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-66018691374008520362008-11-12T08:16:00.001-08:002008-11-12T14:32:26.926-08:00

Macy's reported a disappointing sales for the third quarter losing $44 million. Other retailers are expected to report quarterly results later this week including JC Penney, Kohl's and Nordstrom. Few retailers are already reporting poor sales number for the month of October, which is going to put added pressure on the market and the economy. This is going to be a roller coaster fourth

Vishalnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-45444280269228617282008-11-07T05:28:00.000-08:002008-11-10T14:34:48.536-08:00

On the heels of one of the worst ISM Manufacturing Index numbers in over two decades, the Employment numbers that come out on Friday were expected to be bleak- and it exceeded this expectation as the decline was 40K worse than the consensus average of -200K. The report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is based on two different surveys with different sample sizes and the bigger focus is

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-25215932403066045382008-11-06T13:11:00.000-08:002008-11-06T14:56:41.468-08:00

With the recent turmoil in the Economy, deals and opportunities are soon to follow as astute business persons hunt for opporunities for consolidating their position by moving into spaces vacated by fallen players. Easiest venues for expansion are horizontal, as they encompass your core area of expertise and help topline growth. Cost efficiency benefits are critical components in evaluating a

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-63621261485479726482008-11-04T08:50:00.000-08:002008-11-10T14:35:44.993-08:00

I was just reading an article on MarketingProfs.com that was talking of leveraging a technique called "CARVER" (reminds me of Thanksgiving!) used by the military to "identify and prioritize" targets ("How to Target Your Prospects With Military Precision" http://www.marketingprofs.com/8/target-prospects-with-military-precision-meachum.asp?sp=1). This won't be the first time ideas from the military

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-16250444344757985942008-11-03T07:54:00.000-08:002008-11-10T14:36:08.214-08:00

So we were just talking about how the GDP is not a very consistent measure of the economy.The Institute for Supply Managements Manufacturing index (formerly known as the NAPM Survey) just came out today and this little guy's been historically good at measuring contractions. The Index is constructed such that levels at 50 or above signal growth in the manufacturing sector, which is a good measure

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-51099790658567499992008-11-01T12:17:00.000-07:002008-11-10T14:36:26.805-08:00

In economics, expert and layman alike keep looking at the GDP quarter over quarter for some direction as to the true health of the economy. Talk about the blind leading the lame! If bubbles are reflective of an inflation of values of goods and assets, be it stocks, real estate or currencies, then an inconsistent metric is one that lacks robustness not to be influenced by bubbles. Look at the GDP-

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6046114863824364256.post-44305953504555580912008-07-08T20:37:00.000-07:002008-11-10T14:37:02.133-08:00

Not too many people are aware of how the money they charge on their card at the Credit Card Machine in their favorite store makes its way to their monthly statement and who the intermediaries that are involved in this transaction trail are. In simple words, there are basically open networks like MasterCard and VISA that have different parties, like issuing banks (card issuers), merchant banks (

Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06590823969089852131noreply@blogger.com0