Archive for April 24th, 2009

The folks who don’t pay income taxes think they pay their fair share … huh ?

April 24, 2009

52% of U.S. voters now believe they pay more than their fair share of taxes.  The split:  61% of Republicans, 48% of Democrats and 48% of independents.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/taxes/most_voters_say_they_pay_more_than_their_share_of_taxes_political_class_disagrees

Ken’s Translation: The half of the population that actually pays income taxes thinks that it pays too much; the half that pays no income taxes thinks that it pays about the right amount.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.

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51% of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week; 33%  view the events unfavorably; 15% hadn’t even heard about the tea parties (since they get their news exclusively from the NY Times)..  

The tea parties were viewed favorably by 83% of Republicans, 49% of unaffiliated Americans, and 28% of Democrats.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics2/51_view_tea_parties_favorably_political_class_strongly_disagrees

Ken’s Take: So, when and where will the folks who favor high taxes and out-of-control spending hold their rallies ?

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What are Your Friends Worth? … New Research Puts a Price Tag on Your Network

April 24, 2009

Excerpted from BusinessWeek, “Putting a Price on Social Connections”, by Stephen Baker, April 8, 2009

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Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to a new analysis of social networks in the workplace by IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The research even assigns a dollar value to e-mail interaction with an employee’s managers. Among the group studied, several thousand consultants at IBM, those with strong links to a manager produced an average of $588 of revenue per month over the norm.

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The results represent an early attempt to understand the value of the broadening variety of personal connections afforded by the Web. Users of social media rack up LinkedIn contacts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers by the hundreds, if not thousands. But figuring out how big a difference all those contacts make in a person’s life, financial or otherwise, is a far murkier matter.

That’s why leading tech companies are hiring economists, anthropologists, and other social scientists to map and classify new types of friendships—and put a value on them.

For example, researchers found that the average e-mail contact was worth $948 in revenue. Using mathematical formulas to analyze the e-mail traffic, address books, and buddy lists of 2,600 IBM consultants over the course of a year, they compared the communication patterns with performance, as measured by billable hours.

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In another study, an IBM team analyzes company methods to introduce employees to colleagues they haven’t yet met. The idea is to create new connections within the global workforce and to encourage employees to share knowledge.

One key is to alert people to potential friends and allies at the company. Much the way companies like Netflix and Amazon study past Web-surfing patterns to recommend books and movies, Geyer and his team are digging for signs of shared interests and behaviors among their colleagues.

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Research into the networked behavior of employees promises insights about teamwork, innovation, and the transmission of knowledge and ideas within a given company.

The research is at an early stage. But as the economy struggles, more companies are sure to study the company we keep—and even attempt to calculate how much each friendship is worth.

Edit by DAF

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Full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc2009047_031301.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_dialogue+with+readers

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Posted in Internet - Soc Networking, Mktg - Brands | Leave a Comment »

Marketers Step Up Promotions … What Does it Cost the Brand?

April 24, 2009

Excerpted from AdAge, “Deal or No Deal? Cheap Prices Can Maim Your Brand” By Jack Neff, April 06, 2009

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Google searches for the term “coupons” last month for the first time surpassed those for “Britney Spears.”

That simple fact drives home what a lot of package-goods marketers already know: What consumers want now is promotion.

But as the industry increasingly gives in to that wish … the question becomes how much marketers can discount without doing permanent damage to their brands …

For sure, the recession  is creating a huge consumer appetite for deals … Package-goods companies seem to be complying. After relative restraint on trade spending in 2008, marketers appear to have stepped on the gas in February. The percentage of volume sold on promotion was up 5.6 percentage points to 38.4%  …

Much as consumers and retailers may want deals, conventional wisdom is they pose a threat to brand health. Numerous studies have shown price promotion erodes brand equity by permanently making consumers more price-sensitive.

Mmarketers will resist cutting prices permanently as long as possible in favor of stepped-up promotion, because temporary deals erode margins less than permanent price cuts.

Promotion can play a positive role for brands in a recession … Promotion that wins a place on retailers’ circulars becomes more important when more consumers are planning purchases at home, as they are now … Realistically, that usually comes at the expense of a temporary price reduction.

Circulars are used about 45% of the time to create shopping lists … “If I’m a marketer, I want to make sure I’m in context of where the list is being made, because right now about 11% of the shopping list is by brand name, and when it is, there’s an 85% chance [the shopper] is going to buy it.”

Edit by SAC

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Full Article:
http://adage.com/article?article_id=135800

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