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 U.S. online video ad market is growing at 30% a year. Still, it is just a small fraction of total U.S. T.V. advertising spending. The leader in the online market is Hulu. GE’s NBC Universal, News Corporation, and Walt Disney are Hulu’s owners. Hulu and some other video sites provide free professionally-produced videos from its investors. Hulu exists on an advertising business model. Hulu will place one or two thirty-second ad spots during a few commercial breaks for hour-long shows. Since this market is showing so much growth, the leading cable firms, Comcast and…
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 MoreNokia is an industry Standard Leader who struggles at the high end of the market. Nokia demonstrates its grasp of the mass market with a recent pricing innovation in India. In that country, Nokia owns half the market. In order to encourage further growth in the market, Nokia plans to roll out new handsets in twelve rural Indian states. In these states, the company has allied itself with a microfinance organization that is buying the handsets from Nokia and selling them to women in rural areas on the installment plan for 100 rupees a week.…
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 MoreOver the last fifteen years, the number of items offered in the typical grocery store has increased by over 50%. Customers are beginning to be confused by the number of choices offered at the grocery store. This proliferation of consumer choices is a retail-wide phenomenon. Consumer goods manufacturers have created more varieties, sizes and shadings in order to win more shelf space from retailers and more attention from consumers. Using the Customer Buying Hierarchy (see Audio Tip #95: The Customer Buying Hierarchy on StrategyStreet.com), the retail consumer would see the product choices as Functions, the…
Read MoreThe hotel industry is struggling today. Demand is off everywhere in the world. Everyone is suffering, including Marriott. But Marriott will survive, and even thrive, in this market. It has been through bad times before and always has emerged the leader in the industry. (See Audio Tip #31: Volatility in Hostile and Non-Hostile Industries on StrategyStreet.com.) It leads its industry because the top management of the company focuses all its energies on delivering a consistent, predictable product in each of its dozen or more brand names. It is known throughout the business travelers’ world as…
Read MoreThe evolution of a market often brings new consumers who prefer, or can afford, only low-priced products. In order to reach these consumers, a company must reduce its costs while it grows. The British confectionery firm Cadbury dominates the Indian chocolate market. It has 70% market share in the chocolate market and a 30% share of the confectionery market in India. The company began operations in India in 1947. They imported its chocolate bars and sold them to the very wealthy. Later, it developed its own factories in India. As the Indian market develops, more…
Read MoreVerizon Communications recently announced that it was entering the market for cloud computing. Cloud computing is a service that allows a business to increase its computing power by using the internet, network bandwidth, on demand, from facilities operated by companies like Verizon. This market is fast-growing because it allows businesses to save the costs of building and managing their own computer facilities. Let’s use the Customer Buying Hierarchy to evaluate the prospect for Verizon’s success. The Customer Buying Hierarchy (see “Video 27: Full Description of How the Customer Buying Hierarchy Works” on StrategyStreet.com) holds that…
Read MoreAfter failing more than once to create an innovative and attractive search product, the persistent Microsoft is back with a new entry called Bing. Let’s use the Customer Buying Hierarchy to evaluate the prospect for the Bing’s success. The Customer Buying Hierarchy (see “Video 27: Full Description of How the Customer Buying Hierarchy Works” on StrategyStreet.com) holds that customers buy a product using four categories of evaluation: Function, Reliability, Convenience and Price. Function (see “Video 13: Definition of Function” on StrategyStreet.com) refers to the features of the product that affect how it is used. Reliability…
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