by Chuck McKay | Nov 6, 2008 | Customer Education, Expectations, and Motivation, Customer Focus, Retention, and Evangelism
The Dallas Cowboys haven’t had that bad of a season. Five wins, four losses. Slightly better than average. Unfortunately, the die hard fans are devastated. Care to speculate why? Probably because their expectations for the 2008 season included the Super Bowl....
by Chuck McKay | Oct 19, 2008 | Customer Education, Expectations, and Motivation, Psychology and Consumer Behavior
A couple of decades ago I sat on the invisible side of a two-way mirror and studied the members of a focus group as they watched some television ads my company was testing. One of my company’s most vocal supporters watched an ad that positioned our product as...
by Chuck McKay | Aug 20, 2008 | Customer Education, Expectations, and Motivation, Customer Focus, Retention, and Evangelism, Lifetime Customer Value (LCV)
How many times have we read that it costs 5 to 7 times as much to acquire a customer as it does to retain one? And yet, knowing that existing relationships are more profitable, we spend the majority of our planning and budget on new customer acquisition. Unless...
by Chuck McKay | Jul 25, 2008 | Customer Education, Expectations, and Motivation, Customer Focus, Retention, and Evangelism
Nine-year-old Lindsey, who’s visiting her grandmother and me, obviously has the entrepreneurial gene. She decided on Wednesday to open the classic American neighborhood business, the lemonade stand. I suspect there are a few retail marketing lessons every...
by Chuck McKay | Jul 13, 2008 | Customer Education, Expectations, and Motivation, Psychology and Consumer Behavior
Cognitive dissonance. It’s the discomfort caused by two conflicting thoughts. It’s the pain of learning something new, which contradicts what’s already accepted as true. And it’s often strongest when a person believes something about himself,...
by Chuck McKay | Jun 23, 2008 | Advertising / Marketing Strategy, Budgeting, Pricing, and Return on Advertising Investment (ROAI), Customer Education, Expectations, and Motivation, Customer Focus, Retention, and Evangelism
Are you in retail? Have your sales been affected by gas prices? I just eavesdropped on a conversation between the managers of two local stores.* They both noted that store traffic has decreased, and the telephone is ringing much more consistently, since the price of...
