The Power of Retail

The boom in celebrity-hood has brought about lots of trends that are being followed quite religiously by a lot of consumers. What celebrities have done is make lots of controversial issues become completely acceptable, even with the regular middle-class consumer. One such trend that is completely ok is for going into Drug Rehabilitation, which was slightly controversial earlier, but is almost normal now. With celebrities treating rehab as a weekend spa treatment, why not the regular masses.

In a weird way, this is really going to benefit those who are in trouble themselves and not sure what they should do. It’s almost as if a green light has been given to them, that it’s ok to go into rehab and sort their problems out. Cliffside Malibu is reportedly one of the very successful places and has lots of success cases, including some celebrity ones as well. It all comes down to marketing these centres which is done exceedingly well, and all you need is a stamp of approval from a celebrity.

Amazon announced that it had acquired Brilliance Audio, an audiobook publisher and will be using its Disc On Demand service for recorded books, movies and music. No matter which publisher produces an audiobook, Disc On Demand service will have it available for consumers. It’s a good way for publishers to have more audiobooks and not just limit them to the best-selling titles, like they have been till now. I’ve only listened to a couple of audiobooks but really enjoyed them. They are a perfect companion on long drives when you find it hard to keep awake. Well, they are more than that, but that was got me interested in them in the beginning.

As a retail analyst and researcher I spend a lot of time studying trends and analysing new products and services. I usually take the perspective of a consumer and decipher how and why it will or will not work. As part of my job, I keep track of trends and events going on in the marketplace and in the larger economy and I find it quite interesting to do reviews of products and services. In this regard, I have added a link in my sidebar, for anyone who is interested in having me review their product or service. Having over 15 years experience in the retail industry and consumer behaviour, I have good judging abilities and analytical skills.

Whole Foods Market has never been shy of experimentation and it is now trying out an Asian diner called Izakaya instead of its regular coffee bar at its Logan Circle store in Washington DC. The diner is stylish and spare and even though it is located right next to the checkout counters, it still looks like a regular restaurant. The restaurant is self-service, with customers placing orders with the cooks, taking a number and paying at the cashier. It’s definitely an innovative step for a food retailer to offer a quality restaurant on their premises, but the trend has been seen at departments stores as well, and customers are getting quite accustomed to it.

I’ve been browsing sites to look into home office setups, especially to find some nice furniture to keep all my technichal stuff organized and easily accessible. I didn’t find exactly the kind of desk assistant I was looking for but I did find a great place to get ink and toner supplies. For someone who has got stuck with a bad quality inkjet cartridge, I never, ever go by the chance of stocking up on some high quality ink supplies.

Inkers stocks only toner and ink cartridges that are backed by a 100% guarantee against defects for a year. When you order from them, there is no shipping charge if you select to ship by regular mail, and deliveries usually take just 2-3 days. It’s such a relief not to worry about problems relating to running out of ink or toner or using lower quality stuff. It’s simply not worth the amount of money you save, which eventually ends up ruining your printer.

Are you making any changes in your shopping due to the high gas prices? The majority of consumers across the US have been hit hard by rising gas prices and have made some change or the other to combat this increase. Some are driving less and cutting back on daily expenses, some are working longer hours on fewer days to reduce gas bills and others are looking for the best gas prices on the Internet. Carpooling and bus services users have also increased. The Central Ohio Transit Authority registered 33,500 more riders in the past four weeks than it had for the same period last year.

The travel industry is also feeling the hit, as high gas prices are discouraging US consumers to travel by road. While not everyone is going to cancel their summer or weekend trips, the amount of money they spend on it will decrease, selecting to stay at cheaper hotels, eat at cheaper restaurants etc. The National Retail Federation’s recent survey on gas prices showed that 40% of respondents said that they would take fewer shopping trips, 31% said they are on the lookout for bargains and 24% said that they are using more coupons. The area that are facing the brunt of reduced shopping is clothing.

Some retailers are offering special deals for their customers. Giant Eagle’s customers get 20 cents off a gallon for every $50 spent. The company also has a special at its GetGo stations, where all customers using a GetGo loyalty card get 3 cents off per gallon, no matter how much they spend.

As the number of people working from home increase, the need for software solutions like GroupWare are only going to go up. GroupWare is a set of collaboration tools that lets you integrate your calenders, contacts, notes, tasks with other people in the organization. Rather than relying on telephone calls and email ping-pong, it just makes sense to invest in such a system that lets everyone see what’s going on, what their tasks are, when the next meeting is and so on. It is possible to have a shared calender as well as a personal calender for privacy. With this collaboration software it will be possible to schedule team meetings, manage notes and pending tasks, and much more. The system works really well for employees in the same office or remote locations. I can’t wait to get started on it.

The results of American Idol are out and Jordin is the winner. I have been following the trends and search engine rankings for the past couple of weeks for the finalists and Jordin was actually trailing Blake in terms of most number of searches till a few days back. She definitely had the popular vote, along with the fact that last year’s idol was a boy, this year the odds were that it would be a girl. Blake has a huge fan following, but his is a niche audience and not a mainsteam audience like Jordin, and that’s how the winner was decided.

On Google’s newest Hot Trends page, the first 20 odd searches are to do with American Idol, with Jordin Sparks at #8. Blake Lewis does not feature anywhere in the top 100, so it goes to show where the trend has been running.

Online merchants are taking to social networking like never before. Big Fish Games is adding some new ideas related to social networking to it’s site. According to Paul Thelen, founder and CEO of Big Fish Games, the company saw a sales increase of 180% in 2006, up from $8.6 million in 2005 to $24.1 million in 2006, and the main reason for this exponential growth is the new buyers they have received as well as the careful attention to existing customers and affiliates. Using the success of MySpace and YouTube as a starting point, the company is exploring new ways of generating traffic.

Big Fish’s foray into social networking results from its business model. “Big Fish has a hardcore focus on analytics-based marketing,” Thelen says. “Every month we have 15 or 20 different ways to spend money, then once we’ve invested in some we analyze how the projects returned on the investment. If they produce, we expand them aggressively. If not then we either change them or cut them out completely,” he adds.

Real estate management is getting more professional with companies such as Builium, which provides an online property management software specifically for landlords, property managers and homeowner associations. With this real estate software, it is possible to take care of all the details such as fee collections, budgeting, tracking issues, repair and maintenance logs etc. Our apartment complex uses a very basic system and this would be just the solution for us, as there have been lots of goof ups lately. The Buildium Association Edition makes it extremely simple to manage masses of information without even having to install any software or go through any training for using it.