Transactional buyers and relationship buyers
Nice article http://www.dbmarketing.com/articles/Art142.htm .

Most companies assume that their customers are highly price sensitive. They design their marketing program with that idea in mind. When they have sales, more people buy. When they are not on sale, less people buy. What more proof of price sensitivity do you need?
Transaction vs Relationship Buyers
Actually, you need a lot more proof, because the response to discounted sales is usually quite misleading. As Paul Wang, Professor at Northwestern University points out, there are, in general, two types of customers: transaction buyers and relationship buyers. A transaction buyer is someone who is interested only in price. These buyers have no loyalty. You can keep your warehouse open on a Saturday afternoon to meet some special need that they have. The following Tuesday when they have another requirement, they will bid it out. These people will leave you for a penny’s difference in price. They have all the catalogs and know all the competitor’s prices. They spend hours on the Internet researching before they buy. They can afford to wait. They take pride in getting the best deal.
The other type of buyers are relationship buyers. These are people who are looking for a supplier that they can trust. They are seeking friendly companies with reliable products – people who recognize them, remember them, do favors for them, who build a relationship with them. Once they have found such a supplier, they tend to give them all their business. They know that they could save a buck here or there by shopping around, but they find the process wastes too much of their time and emotional energy. Relationship buyers, if properly cultivated, will stay with you for a lifetime.
Brian Woolf, President of the Retail Strategy Center and author of Customer Specific Marketing, said this: "For years, retailers have argued that having regularly advertised, deeply discounted prices brings price-oriented customers into their stores but that over time, these customers convert into regular, profitable customers.
Research at the Retail Strategy Center shows that this widely held belief is a myth. A handful of these customers do convert into "good" regular customers, but the majority actually defect within twelve months of their first shopping visit. I have yet to find a retailer anywhere in the world whose investment in this type of shopper has yielded an attractive return on investment."
Mercer Management consulting research shows that for hotels, gas stations, drug or food stores, only 15% to 30% of customers are price sensitive. The other 70% to 85% are loyal customers who provide most of the profits. In fact, if you could take an Olympian view of the situation, it might look something like this:


- 1:10 PM 0 comments  

 
Google ads , clicks ,Exposing click fraud
Exposing click fraud CNET News.com

The above article highlights a major loophole in the pay-per-click marketing model. On the contrary whenever, I search on google I do my best not to click on the advertised links , instead if I find something interesting on the advertisement panel I just type the website address and reach the site for the relevant information.
This way atleast they won't have to pay for my need of information:)

- 11:13 AM 0 comments  

 
Software Feature Addiction: Use Black Magic
In deciding the features, it is best to concentrate on few and make sure that it is done the best.

After that call a magic sorcerer and put a spell on those features, do some Indian Jadoo-Mantra-Tantra on those features so that as soon as the users sees the software in action for the first time they instantly fall in 'Can't live without you' kinda luv.

I wish this was possible, hey anybody have better ideas?
- 8:15 AM 0 comments