OK, I get it; the way we shop is changing. But when does it end? In an effort to get people in the door or on the screen, retailers are giving away the farm. Think “Extreme Couponing” gone mainstream. Nowadays when we go to buy items, big and small, we start out on the web
Read More
It turns out that under the pressure of events, the economy in Cyprus is becoming cash-driven. Merchants are making purchases in cash, because their suppliers are demanding it, and in turn demanding cash of their customers. Because they don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Literally. The headline on the print version of this story
Read More
Towards the end of his life, the great American poet Robert Frost wrote, In the ear and in the eye, What you get is what to buy. He was talking about television and radio, of course, but he didn’t know the half of it. How could he? It was 35 years after his death that
Read More
The national unemployment rate might be decreasing, but when we are looking at the same metric for the 80 million US Millennials, we see a staggering 13.1%. Interestingly enough, Yankelovich reports that the median salary for college graduates and the cost of education seem to be inversely related. As the median salary has decreased, the
Read More
Saturday morning’s cartoons were a staple in my household back in the ’70s. This was the only opportunity to show my parents what I wanted for Christmas or for my birthday without actually leaving the house. I’d yell from the living room, “Mom! Dad! Come in here. That’s the Barbie Townhouse my friend Elizabeth has…see…it
Read More
You hear the buzz about “showrooming” everywhere – I personally felt its silent presence at the NRF Show in January, and even at a small NYPAY Conference in Manhattan last month. Showrooming—or the idea that consumers use brick-and-mortar stores to examine merchandise and then purchase them online for less—is one of the biggest threats to
Read More
Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but bear with me. It’s all about the tradeoff. When online, consumers today are constantly playing the game of what information to share and with what online entity. The tradeoff comes in when we balance what we want with what the online entity wants. Deloitte’s Eric Openshaw and Brian Shniderman
Read More
