Things to think about... |
 |
As the ink dries on Tata's takeover of British brands Jaguar and Landrover, we learn that last year, Indians bought nearly $18bn worth (£9bn) of western companies, more than five times the value of Western takeovers in India. |
 |
"It definitely
wasn't our finest hour," understated Willie Walsh,
chief executive, British Airways on the disastrous opening of Heathrow's Terminal
Five. The airline had to cancel hundreds of flights when
problems in the baggage-handling system resulted in a backlog of
at least 20,000 bags. BA had to send thousands
of suitcases to a sorting facility in Italy. Read our CEO, Hugh
Burkitt's analysis of the situation on our new
blog. |
 |
|
|
|
 |
Forget about the naked ambition and the fierce rhetorical battle of race versus gender, of talked-up experience versus talked-up enthusiasm. We were fascinated to hear that Barack Obama is ninth cousin to Brad Pitt and Hillary Clinton is ninth cousin to Angelina Jolie. Only in America. |
|
Inspired by the tale that Mars, the chocolate bar maker, noticed an unusual increase in sales of Mars bars in the summer of 1997, when NASA landed the Pathfinder spacecraft on the surface of Mars, two academics have investigated whether environmental cues have an impact on consumer behaviour. Jonah Berger from Wharton and Grainne Fitzsimons from the University of Waterloo claim that the presence of dogs on the street can make people more receptive to Puma sportswear, even though Puma has a big-cat logo. |
 |
| |
|
|
 |
Don't worry about pester power, pet power is where it's at. The Cat Cafe has proved to be a big hit in Toyko. At the Cafe Calioco in the city's Kichijoji district, a cappuccino comes with fur on the side. Customers spend around £4 an hour to stroke one of 19 resident felines lounging on moggy-themed cushions. The concept has been such a success that reservations are required in peak periods. |
|
A new book, The Best Service is No Service by Bill Price, former VP global customer services Amazon, suggests that if companies could get things right in the first place most companies would never need or want customer service. Amazon has a metric called contacts per customer order (CPO), which it has managed to reduce by 90% over the last five years by eliminating the need for customer contact. Customer contacts have four broad causes. One in seven is triggered by basic quality defects ("It doesn't work"). About a quarter take the form of "How do I?" questions. About 40 per cent are "Where can I get?" queries. The final 20 per cent are from customers wanting to buy stuff. The more the first 80 per cent can be reduced, the more resources the company can invest in helping customers when they really do need service. |
 |
| |
|
|
 |
The business model of the future is all about offering things for free, according to Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and author of The Longtail. His new book Free, to be published in 2009, argues that we're entering an era when free will be seen as the norm, not an anomaly. Free shifts the economy from a focus quantified in pounds and pennies to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today such as the new scarcities - reputation and attention. |
|
Havana is changing.
In the past five weeks, the government has announced and enacted a
series of reforms unthinkable under Fidel Castro. It is now legal
to buy mobile phones, computers and DVD players. Cubans may now rent
cars and stay in hotels previously reserved for foreigners. Sanctioning
spending sprees on previously banned consumer goods has given ironic
resonance to revolutionary slogans. |
 |
| |
|
|
 |
Tesco is the second most powerful brand in Britain and the 25th globally with a brand value of £23,208m, according to the latest BrandZ Top 100 most powerful brands survey from Millward Brown. Hear the secrets of its success from Richard Brasher, commercial and trading director, Tesco, at this year's Retail Forum on 20 May. |
|
Male monkeys prefer boys toys, according to research published in The New Scientist, which studied 11 male and 23 female captive rhesus monkeys. In general the males preferred to play with wheeled toys, such as dumper trucks, over soft toys like Winnie the Pooh, while female monkeys played with both kinds of toys. These findings contradict psychologists who insist that sex differences depend on social factors rather than innate differences. |
 |
