You thought you did everything right"”gathered market research and consumer insights; brainstormed, prototyped, and tested a promising new idea; developed detailed financial models and a solid marketing plan. Yet your company's new product or service didn't perform as expected. What did you overlook?
Two things you should never do on an empty stomach: shop for groceries, and predict the future. In the case of the latter, that must be a guiding principle of the San Francisco Roundtable of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, which takes care to feed attendees before presenting its annual, much-anticipated predictions for the coming year and beyond.
Some of the biggest names in private equity are racing to set up shop in Southeast Asia, drawn by the region's rapid economic development and abundance of natural resources, according to The Boston Consulting Group's report, Private Equity in Southeast Asia: Increasing Success, Rising Competition.
In the run up to Christmas, UK retailers are frustrating shoppers with distinctly average customer service. Top UK merchants are failing to answer questions asked online or sent via email, according to the 2012 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study. The research found that just 48 percent of retailers could successfully answer basic questions sent via email, while websites could answer just over half (53 percent) of questions asked online.
As the holiday buying season continues to gather steam, the Consumer Fraud Center has warned about a fast-growing trend: the sale of goods at bargain-basement prices through so-called "daily deal" sites, which can mask the sale of counterfeit or illicit goods.