Professors Meyer-Waarden and Benavent have just published some new research on loyalty that may underscore some of we’ve been talking about now for a while: most rewards don’t reward those whose loyalty really matters.
Their thesis is that consumers all value different things and a one size fits all program will miss the mark the majority […]

There’s an old article by Milton Friedman that argues that as people get wealthier they don’t care much about modest increases in wealth and only about really big ones. What’s another $1 million if you have $1 billion? You are most interested in things that will get you another billion. I think it provides […]

Underestimating Google can be disastrous, says Don Reisinger on CNET recently, especially if you are a mobile carrier. I’ve been saying this for a while too but I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a minute and suggest that overestimating Google can lead to a waste of money and focus even if it isn’t […]

Keyword prices are set by auction, Google can’t make these prices any higher, and therefore we shouldn’t really worry about Google’s market share because they can’t hurt advertisers. This syllogism, which seems to be put forward with some frequency these days, was behind Randall Stross’s defense of Google’s deal with Yahoo. Here’s why it’s […]

I recently read an article that compared Entrepreneurs to Artists. Potentially a bit self serving as an Entrepreneur, I immediately gravitated to the message of the comparison. Although I always felt like a creator and knew my business creations had the potential to touch lives, it was the first time I had seen such a […]

I spoke at the Brookings Institute Conference on the Future of Payments. Ken Chenault was the lead speaker and used the opportunity to celebrate American Express’s 50th anniversary in the card business. They started their charge card n 1958. They almost sold it a few years later to Diners Club but luckily for Amex the […]

The latest post from Javelin describes “the future” of payments as, (yes, you guessed it), contactless. The author, having just returned from a conference in Singapore, describes a number of demos of contactless in Japan made popular by DoComo and powered by Sony’s FeliCa’s chip. No doubt about it, the scenarios he describes are really […]

I’m looking forward to reading Bill Tancer’s book Click which is supposed to show how analyzing massive amounts of click data, correlated with other data, can tell us what consumers want and predict the economic future. Of course hype sells and this book may have its share. But my guess is, he’s right. Hitwise, […]

I was recently in a meeting with a director of business development for a Fortune 100 company, and as we discussed a potential deal that could provide tremendous value to both organizations, it became clear that size does matter—and in a way that might not be so obvious.
Smaller companies benefit from large organizations’ breadth, […]