A9 Update - No more Pi / 2 Discount?

I just visited a9.com (its my homepage on my laptop) and it is totally different. It really looks better, but I noticed that they state that they've discontinued the A9 Instant Discount Program, aka the pi over 2 discount. I visited Amazon, and it still shows up. Maybe if you already have it, you keep it.

Staples.com unable to process coupons?

I'm trying to buy a Franklin Covey binder, but the Staples.com store isn't accepting my coupons. Argh. Guess I'll have to try again in the morning...

HBS Note on Behavioral Pricing

My friend Shawn who's studying for his MBA in South Carolina sent me his thoughts on a paper published by the Harvard Business School press. I couldn't have agreed with him more.

Customers' perceptions of product pricing is a complex and difficult equation. The simple curve of supply and demand just does not fit into the complex factors present in the lives of consumers today as well as it used to.

With the success of the convenient store, shopping as entertainment, and the explosion of the merchandising industry, consumers have begun to appreciate and value the entire experience of a product. This experience can include the extremity of a good "deal" - whereas the purchaser bought something solely because alternate purchases would cost more, or for the amount of time required to purchase the product, among many other possibilities.

As the actual activity of shopping plays a more active role in consumers' minds and buying decisions, retailers, consumer product manufacturers, and service providers will need to revisit their strategies for maintaining competitive advantage, high margins, and customer satisfaction.

As I run my own company, I have many times run into a situation where my role as salesperson had a drastic effect on the customers' satisfaction. Even if the "deal" that the customer received was very good and generally unavailable at that price on the general market, if I delivered it without hesitation, it was perceived as having lower value than it actually did. Perhaps if I was feigned reluctance they would have been more satisfied in the end run. Sales and negotiation tactics really are related!

Comcast versus Google versus Firefox

Uh-oh. Something is going badly with Comcast, Google, and Firefox. Here in the Boston area, a traceroute on the Comcast network to google over the http (port 80) protocol is stopped at above.net. Something fishy is going on.

My guess is that Comcast is trying to do something fishy with internet acceleration, Internet Explorer, and the like. When I was trying to debug the issue, it seemed as though my client was downloading more information that I had actually requested.

Hmmmmm. I called in to Comcast to see if there was a problem and they said no. Apparently there is, I've confirmed this with two other sources - a friend of mine who is also on the Comcast network, and I found a blog with the same type of reports, Bostonist I think.

Yes, here's the link:

Its Not Firefox... Its Comcastic!

Other reports:

Northeast complains of Google...

Google investigating access difficulties...

New Gap Commercial

The new Gap commercial with AC/DC and Audrey Hepburn is very cool. I'm really impressed with the agency's willingness to do something that isn't "perfect". In fact that commercial is a little off kilter, good for them, and Gap.

I don't like Gap clothes much, but I do like the commercial. Anyone know which agency produced it? Modernista, perhaps?

If you haven't seen it yet, you can see it here:

New Gap Commercial with AC/DC and Audrey Hepburn

Best Buy Magnolia Home Theatre Stores

My personal experience with Best Buy has been bad. Every time I have visited their store, I was unable to get anyone to answer any of my questions. Of course your experience may have been different than mine.

Now Best Buy has a new home theatre store within a store called Magnolia Home Theatre. You know what I think? It is the same old Best Buy with the special option of paying more money!!

eBay Express Commercial Blitz

Wow, the new eBay commercials stink. If you've seen them, they feature a dorky guy with his nose growing, or arguing with copies of himself. "It" appears that eBay is trying to leverage its brand to the larger market, but I think they are going to simply confuse people.

What do you think?

Home Depot Self Checkout Meltdown

I went to Home Depot today to return a faucet adapter, and while I was at it I decided to do some shopping. I actually spent over an hour there, looking for some items, while waiting for some items to find me.

One item I've been looking for is a quality distance measurement tool for quickly measuring room dimensions. They have something like that at Home Depot, but it seemed like low quality, too expensive, and it took a 9-volt battery, which was nonsensical to me.

I did find some screen repair supplies, as well as some glue sticks, two items I was not looking for.

After I was finished shopping, I went to the self checkout and rung up some items. One item, a set of small plastic bins was marked as $5 marked down to $4.18. The self checkout monitor reported needing assistance for entering the price, and when the Home Depot employee ( a very nice and helpful woman, albeit very busy with the problematic self checkout registers ) entered its UPC code, the item rang up for clearance, only $9000. Obviously this was a mistake, so she manually entered the price.

As I continued, an older woman was waiting for her husband to get his turn with the assistant, and so she sat down on what looked like a bench, but is actually a scale that the self checkout registers use to weigh the bagging items. This caused all sorts of problems, and if this post is worth anything, it will send a message to Home Depot to PUT A CHAIR BY THE SELF CHECKOUT REGISTERS!!! This is the second time I've seen this happen so it needs to be resolved.

2006 Fusion Awards

I just received an email that the 2006 Fusion Awards have been annouced. I'm not surprised at all that Staples was one of the winners.

Home Depot, Staples and 10 Others Receive 2006 Fusion Awards

Sanitation Supplies

Where do you go when you need sanitation supplies? Hand sanitizer, paper towels, gloves, mops, and the like? If you tend to buy supplies over and over again, and in bulk, you can get some great deals online. They even have a retail store and showroom, where you can learn about their inventory. They also sell facilities maintenance supplies such as ice melt and ice melt spreaders. Check out websites for more information.

First Shop at Lowes

I went to Lowes for the first time this morning. I've heard many reviews say that it is the more "manicured" home improvement store, compared to Home Depot, and thus more acceptable to women.

The store does have a more organized appearance. There are more colorful signs, and everything seems cleaner. As a reference, it took me about 45 minutes to buy the following:
* One (1) blue tarp
* Two (2) fire extinguishers
* Two (2) pad locks
* One (1) door latch

Which I find an acceptable amount of time. It would have been faster if the locks were not mislabeled - they rang up as $5.49, instead of $4.49, like posted on the shelf. I went back to the shelf and saw that the box of locks was simply in the wrong place on the shelf. This really annoys me, and it caused major problems for me with Office Max. Also, I hadn't planned on buying the fire extinguishers, but when I saw them I remembered that I needed two of them.

Overall, I don't think Lowes is much different than Home Depot. I did notice that the price of an in-line duct fan switch was about $7 higher than Home Depot's price.

Overall, I give Lowes a positive review. In purchasing the items, I used the self checkout. The interface reminded me of the one they have at IKEA, but this one worked much better.

Self Checkout Registers

Self check out registers are awesome, except when they don't work. So far I have used them at four retailers:

* Home Depot
* Super Stop & Shop
* Shaw's
* IKEA

The first two, Home Depot and Super Stop & Shop, got theirs to work. It is possible that they are using the best of breed vendor. Anyone know who it is? The second two, don't seem to have gotten it right.

Supermarkets have it tough. Most of the time, the stores are overcrowded and chaotic. Noone really wants to be there - neither customer, cashier or clerk, or even bagger. To boot, the products are complex, perishable, fragile, large, and inexpensive, all factors which make the food retail business a competitive one. It is components like a self checkout register that can give a general food retailer that competitive edge.

Here are a few tips to make sure your self checkout register is working properly:
* Make sure it can read coupons
* Make sure there is a staff member on hand to help confused customers or registers
* Fix "out-of-order" registers immediately - even if it stops accepting cash, credit, or debit
* Make one of the registers an express, less than 12 items aisle
* Perhaps even give customers an incentive to use the self checkout
* Make sure the scale system does not overpower basic logic and procedure

That last tip regarding the scale system needs a little more explanation than the others. Most self checkout systems attempt to prevent fraud by weighing the scanned item as they are placed into the bagging area, to make sure that customers don't scan one item and take another. This safety feature is often the cause of a disastrous checkout. What happens is the machine repeatedly states "item removed from bagging area", or "please place your item in the bagging area before scanning more items". Confused customers are ready to give up as they try to place and return their scanned items into the bagging area to their best capabilities. Most often, a store employee will come over and simply override the system. I've seen this happen quite a lot, and its never prevented any fraud.

RFID (radio frequency identification) tags will help solve this problem, but they still won't be available cheap enough to put on every box of cereal for some time now. Until then, I'll only use the self checkout register when I have a clean and simple transaction that I know will go through smoothly and quickly.

Furniture Stores for real

We're chimed in how much we dislike annoying furniture commercials:

Annoying furniture store commercials!

But what about the furniture stores themselves? What are they like inside? Well, my wife and I went shopping at a few this past weekend and here's what we found:

Jordan's Furniture
Jordan's has an expansive clearance section, but in my humble opinion, the prices are high, and the fixtures are junk. The show room has a much nicer presentation, but again I found the offerings were a more polished set of the same: high prices for low quality fixtures.

IKEA
IKEA has much better prices, but everytime I go there it takes so long to find anything. In this instance, we finally found something we liked, so we went to the self service stocking area, only to find they were out of stock. Doh!

Target
We first shopped Target online, and then my wife went there tonight. We were able to shop online (me) and in-store (she) at the same time. We decided on what we wanted to buy, and she confirmed the quality was up to par, and the pricing was much better than the alternatives. We paid $500 for two 6 drawer dressers, $250 each.

Target: Mission 6-Drawer Dresser is a good deal.

Please note, this item is VERY heavy.

Seattle Coffee Inside Borders Books

I visited a Borders Books store last night to buy some books for work, and noticed there was a Seattle's Best Coffee cafe there. This is the first of two Seattle's Best sightings I've made on the east coast in recent weeks. Will we see more?

Lost in Home Depot

I went shopping at Home Depot today and man is that place a maze. I realized after about 15 minutes that it was going to take some time so I patiently wandered around trying to find my shopping list:

* electrical tape
* trash bags
* WD-40
* picture hangers
* in-line power switch thermostat (Ductstat)
* door ventilation grill

I was able to use my $5 off $50 coupon as well as use the new company Home Depot corporate Mastercard.