April 12, 2007
Artificially creating barriers to adoption...
I have been looking for a group "to-do" list for a long time, and never really found what I was looking for. Most to-do lists are for individual usage - which is not what I am looking for. And unless you are Google, I do not even get why people bother developing those apps as there are a ton of applications on people's desktop that already have that service integrated - for free.
But as far as a simple group task list for truly distributed teams....there isn't much available. I finally found a solution that looked promising....integrating/synchronizing with Google calendar, etc. - all for $15. So I bought it thinking that would solve my problem. Except that when I tried to invite one of my closest associates, it required that he too buy that same application. That was almost a week ago, and of course that has not happened yet.
How can people do that? Group applications already have plenty of barriers to adoption to overcome - so why a company would artificially add one extra barrier in the mix is a mystery to me. I bet you that most "potential" users of this app would use it with teams of 2-3 people. So if that is the case, charge the buyer of the app $30-50 instead of trying to get $15 from all the users. That way you may end up with some real users instead of frustrated buyers.
Elementary...my dear Watson...
[Tags: barrier to adoption group application]
Posted by francois at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
August 18, 2006
Is there no arbitrage in online retail?
When Ritz Camera told me it would cost a flat $250 to fix my Canon 10D digital camera without even looking at it, it caused me to pause and look at what my options might be.
Since I bought the camera a few years back Canon came out with new models that seem to deal with the issues I was having with my early digital SLR - especially those related to focus and sharpness. Switching brands isn't really an option, as I have generally been happy with my EOS cameras and assembled 4 different lenses for it so far.
Instead of fixing my existing camera (which one day started to develop a dark band on the bottom of my pictures - indicating some sort of miss-alignment of the mirror system as far as I can tell) - I decided to look at the alternative of buying the new 30D.
My surprise came when I started looking for the best price for the 30D. If you look around you can see prices as low as $639 for the body without shipping charges. When you look at 3rd party sellers on Amazon.com or if you check eBay, prices do not seem to go below $1,000 for a new Canon 30D body.
Is there no arbitrage in online retail? Or am I missing something? Could someone actually make $500 per camera by buying and reselling online?
It is not a business I want to get in, but unless I am missing something (which I often do), then the theory that online retail, with all of its online-transaction "data exhaust," would "even out" the power balance between buyers and sellers does not hold true...
What is it that I am overlooking??
[Tags: arbitrage buyer power ads online commerce ]
Posted by francois at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
October 12, 2005
WOMMA responds to AdAge questioning legality of Buzz Marketing
WOMMA (word of mouth marketing association) responded quickly to the article that AdAge published last week (which I wrote about here).
WOMMA says that they have a code of ethics that addresses the stealth marketing issues that were brought up in the article and that thy developed this early to avoid going down the same path as email marketers.
Convinced? I think they need to should go a step further in self-monitoring themselves.
[Technorati Tags: buzz marketing word of mouth wom]
Posted by francois at 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
August 4, 2005
Brand Autopsy launches Discount Detox Center
Using the recent flip flop on extending the employee discounts for everyone by GM as a sad example of discount OD, brand autopsy announced today their Discount Detox Center...The stated goal is: "The goal of the Brand Autopsy Discount Detox Center is to rid businesses of toxins accumulated by rampant abuse of discounting pricing strategies. The first step of discount detox is immediate withdrawal from any and all discounting activities. Once a business has stopped using discounts, fiscal and behavioral withdrawal symptoms may follow."
Very funny - but so true. It is too bad that companies forget history way too quickly. There are so many case studies on the devastating effects of discount OD!
[Technorati Tags: discounts GM]
Posted by francois at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
