Category: Marketing

PetSmart’s bare-bones epiphany ushers in services for ‘pet parents’

PetSmart’s 15,000 employees, from executives to dog groomers, refer to customers as “pet parents.” The practice is grounded in the company’s belief that Americans treat their pets like furry family members — enough to spend almost $36 million on pet supplies and services this year. The key to success in this market, PetSmart has found, lies in services, which account for 20 percent of its growth annually. With clinics for grooming and training, as well as the PetsHotel and Doggie Day Camp, PetSmart truly understands pet owners. Just ask store employees, who enjoy an unusual perk: they can bring their own pets to work.

In the NFL, winners and losers benefit from savvy marketing

What is a strong team brand worth? In the National Football League, it can be staggering. Forbes magazine reports three franchises topped the billion-dollar mark, while three others were above $900 million with the league average at $819 million. While some revenue streams are shared equally among the NFL teams, others — local media rights, parking and concessions, stadium naming rights, local sponsorships and advertising – are not. And here is where the magic of marketing enters the picture. The Seattle Seahawks, which enjoys significant marketing advantage as the only NFL team in the northwest, is looking to develop fan “avidity” among the strategies it is using to build up its brand.

‘Deviant’ management can turn a losing company into a winner

In 1997, Yellow Transportation landed in Fortune magazine’s least-admired companies list. “We were a $2.5 billion company,” says Greg Reid, senior vice president. “But we kept operating the same old way. Also we were losing money – huge, huge siphons of money.” Desperate to yank Yellow from its rut, executives spent a year visiting customers, shadowing employees and talking, talking, talking. The solution? The company embraced “deviant leadership,” a management style that encourages “thinking outside of the box, or saying there never was a box.” By 2003, Yellow snagged the number-one spot in its industry on Fortune’s most-admired companies list, and remained there in the 2004 and 2005 lists.

New mindset: Evolving from a product to a services provider

In terms of strategic vision, the role of services is growing swiftly and surely among American businesses, according to researchers. This often requires an attitude change in which everyone from senior management to the rank and file must view themselves as service suppliers rather than product providers. Communications must become a top priority, because service companies thrive only when information flows freely between provider and customer, as well as within the service provider itself. These and other critical issues were discussed by academics and industry leaders at the 14th Annual Frontiers in Services conference hosted recently by the Center for Services Leadership at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

Details, details: Small survey errors may produce fallacies in research results

Businesses rely on research to gather data and process it into the knowledge needed to identify markets and satisfy customers. When exploring questions about attitudes, beliefs and other intangibles, researchers use Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze data. A W. P. Carey School of Business marketing professor and her co-authors have discovered that a significant percentage of academic researchers used the wrong measurement approach in their studies, resulting in deceptive conclusions. If the researchers performing studies for businesses follow the pattern, companies may be making critical business decisions based on misleading research findings.

Tomorrowland is here, thanks to digitization of services

Digitization is fast becoming ubiquitous, widening the horizon for businesses to expand their service products. Gary Bridge, senior vice-president of Cisco Systems’ Internet division, took an audience of researchers and business leaders from 28 countries on a high-speed tour of these new opportunities at the 14th Annual Frontiers In Services conference, co-hosted by the W. P. Carey School’s Center for Services Leadership and the Center for Excellence in Service at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. From digitally enhanced product marketing to remote service delivery to tele-robotic remote surgery, companies are using digitization to grow services revenues.