Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.

Coupons, daily deals -- the whole mess is based on the mistaken assumption that lowering the price raises sales. It can. But raising prices can increase sales, too. There is a reason P&G made a serious attempt to discontinue coupons years ago. ("No, the Customer is NOT...

Sounds like a lot more Apple stores are in the offing!

As long as retailers continue to "hide" the few items shoppers want, and BUY most, in indiscriminate walls of merchandise, there will be HUGE opportunities in limited selections stores. Then, these stores will ALWAYS begin adding SKUs because a wider selection will ATTRACT more shoppers, even though they may...

"The customer is always right" is a very good PR stance, but not very intelligent for a rational retailer. I wrote on this some time ago, "No, the Customer is NOT Always Right!"

Behavior is pretty much the only thing that matters, and behavior is largely a matter of habit, not thinking. No wonder Neale Martin says that habit is the 95% of behavior that marketers IGNORE! Of course they ignore it, because they are THINKING about it, and assume customers are...

I'm with Bob Phibbs on this, and note the comments on suppliers funding couponing. I wrote about P&G's efforts to abandon couponing some time ago in "No, the Customer is NOT Always Right!" The general rule is that paying customers to buy is evidence of a lack...

So it's a small version of Horn & Hardart's Automat? In any event, nothing wrong with the idea at all -- it's another way to get closer to the customer. Add it to the mix of Amazon making local deliveries through C-stores. The point is that the only reason...

I'm disappointed, and have been from the beginning. Pre-opening, I thought they were going to be a super-C-store. The reality was that they were a shrunken supermarket. I thought that Walmart's response, the Marketside, was a better shrunken supermarket. What I was looking for in both cases was something...

Several years ago we discussed this concept as it was implemented at Super Quinn in Ireland. If memory serves me (not an idle question), Super Quinn disappeared into bankruptcy?

Anyway, in the last couple of years, Walmart has tested the same idea in a store in the Redding, California...

It's not an area of special expertise for me, but I do see this as continuing warfare over efficiency, and who is going to reap the benefit of the efficiency. This would tend to give Walgreens the upper hand.