Belfast Tesco manager’s eye-watering engagement with shopper…

A fisherman grabbed a Tesco manager by the testicles and refused to let go after being stopped over an £800 shoplifting spree, a court has heard.

It was claimed he went into Tesco Newtownbreda Road on 5 December, took security tags off various goods and put them in bags.

Members of the public had to help release his grip as the victim suffered "extreme pain", prosecutors said....

Up to this point it was not clear if the initiative was opportunistic, or simply an extension of the Tesco £1bn ‘turnaround’ plan in terms of “grabbing management by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow…”

Dying to live at home?

                                                                                                                                                     pic: BBC
The late Victorians and the Edwardians lived through a domestic revolution. Theirs was a bold and exciting age of innovation, groundbreaking discoveries and dramatic scientific changes, many of which altered life at home in profound ways - including some that were terrible and unforeseen, writes historian Dr Suzannah Lipscomb in BBC News.

1. Bread adulterated with alum
2. Boracic acid in milk
3. Exploding toilets
4. Killer staircases
5. Flammable parkesine (celluloid)
6. Carbolic acid poisoning
7. Radium (radiation poisoning)
8. The wonder material (asbestos)
9. Fridges design flaws
10. Electricity (quick & effective)

See original article for details & pics

Given our ‘progress’ in a hundred years, makes the horse-meat issue a bit passé?

Fancy a new iPad at 95% discount? - the QuiBids penny-auction model

QuiBids is the world’s largest retail website that operates as a bidding fee auction, also known as a penny auction. The price of auctioned products increase by one QuiBids penny with each bid, which are equal to $0.60, and bidding doesn't start until there is only 5 minutes left in the auction. The final price are typically much lower than other auctions, but all bidders pay $0.60 each time they bid. Losers of the auction have the option of paying the retail price, minus the cost of their bids.

Their product selection runs from the latest Apple products - iPads, iPods, and MacBooks - to high definition televisions, gift cards to top retailers, and much more. To name a few recent sale prices of items like this, a New Apple iPad recently sold for £33.77, a Kindle Fire sold for £15.83, and a HP Laptop sold for £20.83.

For an auction winner, the true cost of an item won at auction is a bit higher than the final auction price because of the amount the auction winner spent bidding to win. But it’s typically modest, and even after bids, most winners save at least 75% off retail.

The OFT have some issues with some versions of the model and offer some pitfalls and offer advice here

There are obviously issues ref. the model’s similarity to a lottery, but with care, the penny auction - via sales to losers - can represent another route to consumer, and further dilution of trade concentration…..

The 'what-if' training dilemma...

"What if we train our NAMs , and they leave...?"
"What if you don't, and they stay...?

Google voice search - the lowtech London billboard crossover?

Google wanted to change consumers' behaviour, and inject some wit and romance into a Google service that could feel cold and distant.

The solution: 
Hyper-relevant context. Google identified London landmarks, and placed relevant billboards nearby in a total of 150 different creative executions around the city. For example, a billboard that said "Ley-tist Skohrz" was placed outside Chelsea FC. Because the service is voice search, the words were written phonetically, drawing further attention, in one of the most media-saturated cities on the planet. More pic-examples here.

Why it won the Media Grand Prix:
The campaign combined the three fundamentals of advertising: technology, analytics and storytelling, with technology driving targeting driving briefing and strategy and eventually creative, a reverse of the normal sequence...

The result:
Google and Manning Gottlieb OMD shop in the U.K. won the Media Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2012

More importantly, voice search in London more than doubled. 

A sign of the times?

"The only artists making a living nowadays are dead ones"
From the movie Blue is the Warmest Colour, a compelling study of relationships....

Managing uncertainty amidst the chaos

At a time when Tesco looks worse, Sainsbury’s are racing back to former glories, Boots, a basket-case only a few years ago but now looking global, Lidl stocking lobsters, and a virtual collapse in demand-growth, most NAMs could be excused for wanting to await a settling down in the market and the emergence of familiar patterns….

However, proactive NAMs know that the ability to cope with the current conditions determines real success in account management.

In other words, treating a flatline market as normal, and factoring risk into trade strategies has to be a way forward.

This means acknowledging that any growth has to come at the expense of the competition, requiring competitive profiling via a buying mix analysis.

It also means facing up to ‘permanent uncertainty’ by conducting a risk analysis for key options and initiatives. In practice this means exploring the impact on the business (high, medium or low), and chance of occurrence (high, medium or low) and developing contingency plans where things going wrong have high impact or a high chance of occurrence, or both.

Uncertainty can then be recognised for what it is, merely a stage in market development…    

Why You Spend More Money on Warm Days

New research in the Journal of Consumer Psychology by researchers led by Yonat Zwebner of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, offers evidence that people value products more highly when they’re feeling comfortably warm. They argue that “exposure to physical warmth activates the concept of emotional warmth,” producing positive emotions and increasing the items’ perceived worth.

A series of experiments revealed a common thread:

The first was a large-scale study that looked at more than six million clicks on a price-comparison website, each of which indicated the intention to purchase a specific product. The researchers looked at two years’ worth of data on eight categories of products (such as watches), and compared the decision to buy with the average temperature on each day, finding “a significant positive effect of temperature on intention-to-purchase”.

A second experiment featured 46 university students, who were randomly assigned to hold and examine either a warm or cool therapeutic pad for 10 seconds “under the guise of a product-evaluation task.” Participants who held the warm pad were willing to pay significantly more for products offered for sale.

For the third experiment, researchers manipulated the temperature in the room where the study was conducted. Students looked at 11 images of “different target products that college students typically consume,” and asked how much they were willing to pay for each. Those in the warm room were willing to pay more for nine of the 11 products.

Conclusion: “Physical warmth induces emotional warmth, which generates greater positive reactions.”

At last, a possible explanation for why the lower temperature in buyers' offices may not be a reflection of the customer's energy conservation policies - or mood! - after all, despite your attempts at prolonged hand-shaking and even hugs.... 

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the pointer)