How well does our system work? You can use the numerical index to check our blogs from the last big recession.
Much of the world suffered a severe recession from 2008 to 2011. During that time, we wrote more than 250 blogs using publicly available information and our Strategystreet system to project what would happen in various companies and industries who were living in those hostile environments. In 2022, we began to update each of these blogs to see what later took place and to check the quality of our conclusions. To date, we have completed the first 175 of our original blogs. You can use these updated blogs to see how well the Strategystreet system works.
The snow skiing season is still a few months away. Still, in preparation for the upcoming season, the ski equipment promotions are underway. One of my favorites comes from Granite Chief. This is a fine retailer of ski equipment in Truckee, California. Each year, the company makes an offer to its customers: Purchase your Ski Service Card by August 31st for $100 and you will have a credit balance for $200 to be used on any of the company’s repair, mounting, tuning and boot-fitting services. Each time the card holder has equipment serviced by the…
Read MoreAmazon and its Kindle products have had the eBook market to themselves since the market began taking off a couple of years ago. The eBook market is now starting to grow fairly fast. Sony has decided to grab some of that growth. Sony is entering the market with three price points: a $199 entry product called the Reader Pocket Edition, the $299 Reader Touch Edition with a touch screen and the high-end Reader Daily Edition at $399 with both touch screen and wireless capability. Very fast-growing markets see market share changes due to Function and…
Read MoreSony has just introduced a new PlayStation3. This product comes in a new slim form factor. Its price is $299. This is a 25% reduction from the $399 price of the current model of the PlayStation3. The price cut comes as the PS3 has struggled against its competitors, whose products have carried lower prices. Sony was in a Leader’s Trap. Leader’s Trap Examples – StrategyStreet.com Not only is the PS3 struggling against lower-priced competitors, it is also facing the head winds of a badly depressed market. Industry sales of game hardware and software are down…
Read MoreIn the bleak economy in the first half of 2009, coupon redemption rose 19% compared to the same period in 2008. Even the largest Price Leaders (see Audio Tip #83: Price Leader Products and Companies on StrategyStreet.com) have had to go along with this development. The three largest discount clubs, Costco Warehouse, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club have increased their couponing to club members. (See Audio Tip #120: Using Low Price to Gain Share in Hostile Markets.) Each of these three clubs carries a membership fee to join the retailer. These club membership payments…
Read MoreThere were a number of articles regarding pricing over the last few days that caught my attention. Whenever a market gets difficult, many competitors, but especially the leaders, can become confused about what to do with their prices. Here are some examples of both effective and ineffective pricing decisions. Delhaize is a Belgian-based supermarket operator. In the United States it operates Food Lion, Hannaford and the Sweet Bay chains. The company saw its sales grow and market share increase during the second quarter of 2009 because it offered comparatively low prices and pushed its own…
Read MoreThere are a hundred thousand job sites in the U.S. and abroad. These sites charge employers to post jobs on their web sites in order to attract qualified employees. The big three in the market include Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo!HotJobs. With unemployment rising world-wide, these job sites are still growing. However, they are losing market share to emerging alternatives. These alternatives are considerably less expensive than the big three. One of these alternatives, LinkedIn, has a professional orientation. This site offers a suite of services, called Talent Advantage, that has gained more than a thousand…
Read MoreThe legal industry is suffering just like the rest of us in this economy. Interestingly, not all legal firms are suffering. The firms that are suffering the most are the large firms, who have done well for many years. These firms typically bill their large clients between $700 and $800 an hour for legal work. They have more than 200 lawyers in the firm. The next tier down sees law firms with 200 or fewer lawyers. These firms typically bill clients between $200 and $500 an hour for work done by their senior partners. Overall,…
Read MoreRecently, Google announced that it was creating an operating system to work on the new small netbook computers. Netbooks are the only part of the PC market that is growing today. Google hopes to introduce an operating system there in order to serve as a stalking horse to slip into Microsoft’s share with desktop and notebook PCs. Also, Cisco has let it be known that it was considering offering a rival to Microsoft’s Office software. This service would let business users create documents they could draft and share through Cisco’s WebEx meeting and collaboration service.…
Read MoreMicrosoft is introducing Windows 7 to replace its unpopular Vista operating system. The company is at logger heads with its PC manufacturing customers over pricing for the new software. Here are two of the problems. First, Microsoft intends to charge $50 for an entry level version of the operating system, called Windows 7 Starter Edition, which is triple the price the company gets for the cheapest version of Windows out now. Microsoft charges between $60 and $150 for Vista today, but the PC manufacturers can use the older Windows XP for roughly $15 for netbooks,…
Read MoreSteel demand is down…by a great deal. The world’s steel plants are operating at less than 45% of capacity. This operating rate is one of the lowest ever. Yet, some U.S. stainless steel makers have actually raised prices by 5 to 6% since early May. The price increase does not come because of an increase in demand for stainless steel. That demand is off as well. How do we explain this phenomenon? The answer lies in the cash costs of the stainless steel companies and their customers. (See Diagnose/Pricing/Company Price Environment on StrategyStreet.com.) There are…
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