Whose Customer Am I?
I read the following question on Quora recently: You buy a pen from a store. Then, are you a customer of that store or pen manufacturing company? Normally, my answers…
Perils Of Blind Retargeting
Since the time I published Retargeted Ads or Retarded Ads, I've come across many more retargeted ads exhibiting retarded behavior. Take for example the ones from Cleartrip. Well after I'd…
Five Ways For Banks To Boost Credit Card Use
I got my first credit card in the late '80s. Since then, I’ve been a major fan of plastic. Rewards, deferred payment and a built-in line of defence from fraud…
Don’t Ask Your Customers What They Want When You Design A Product
One perennial question that startups - and even product managers of established companies - ask us while designing a new product is whether they should ask customers what they want.…
3 Ways To Get Approvals For Case Studies From Reluctant Customers
In Right And Wrong Ways Of Using Case Studies, we saw when to use case studies and when not to. Let's now assume that a technology vendor has reached a certain…
Just Because Customers Can Find Their Own Solutions Doesn’t Mean They Will
There’s lot of data in the public domain. Buyer 2.0 is Internet-savvy. So they will help themselves to all that information and find solutions to their pain areas by themselves.…
Banks Will Know Chipotle Is Going Bankrupt Before Chipotle’s CEO
Following Chipotle’s e-coli scare late last year, the burrito chain’s stock has been on a free fall. From a peak of ~$750 in October 2015, the stock price plummeted to…
Scoping Can Make Or Break A Deal
Whenever they're asked to sweeten a deal, most vendors respond with a discount. They don't have to. In Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount, we gave…
Publix Deserves A Standing Ovation
You generally give standing ovations to speeches, concerts and other live events. On one occasion, I literally stood up and clapped after reading a book (it was "Gods of Guilt" by…
How To Really Kill Cash
They said cash is costly. It didn't work with merchants. They launched one mobile wallet after the other to drive cashless behavior. It didn't work with consumers. They scared people…