How can I "But" it? And should I?

I was trawling around eBay and found this listing.

Specialized S-Works Epic FSR 29er Carbon Full-Suspension Mountain Bike 21.2lbs!!

The photograph accompanying the listing looked a bit too professional for your usual eBay listing.

Source:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Specialized-S-Works-Epic-FSR-29er-Carbon-Full-Suspension-Mountain-Bike-21-2lbs-/130837187186?pt=Mountain_Bikes&hash=item1e76810a72

When I looked, the price for the auction was just over $700 dollars, a killer deal, but something about this just looked fishy. 

The next part of the listing was the "nail in the coffin". 

Source: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Specialized-S-Works-Epic-FSR-29er-Carbon-Full-Suspension-Mountain-Bike-21-2lbs-/130837187186?pt=Mountain_Bikes&hash=item1e76810a72

You know, I've always wanted to "But it Now".

This may have been on the up and up, but something about this just did not seem quite right. $2350 would be a amazing deal for a bicycle that usually retailer almost $10,000. But if something seems too good to be true, then it usually is.

I followed up with the vendor and was informed that the frame size is 54 centimetres. This was another red flag as that would be a massive frame for a mountain bike, and does not fit at all with the photo.I checked on the Specialized website and the largest frame (XL) is 52 centimetres. I asked about the make and model of the components and received no reply.

Something, well pretty much everything, about this auction, does not seem quite right. I won't be bidding.

Postscript: The auction disappeared and I never did hear back from the vendor. I guess if something looks to good to be true it usually is.

 

Facebook does not seem to get it

Ads on the Facebook Scrabble page, January 28, 2013

I have been on Facebook for a year or so. I use the site sparingly, have my privacy settings cranked up, and rarely post or comment. But I do use the site to play Scrabble with my family.

Facebook knows where I am, and as a result feeds ads that are sometimes theoretically relevant to me.

These are the fist five ads on my Facebook page today. SFU makes sense. I'm in Canada so an RSP ad also fits. Aboriginal canoe and kayak tours in BC is a fit with my location and I've been to the Sunshine Coast in the summer, so a winter visit is not beyond the realm of possibility. But why do I have a Zappos ad here?

Zappos has not shipped to Canada since 2011. According to the Zappos site;

We have made the difficult decision to shut down the canada.zappos.com site and stop shipping to Canada. One of our core values is to "deliver WOW through service". That means the best selection of brands and products that can meet just about every individual's needs as well as fast, free shipping and free returns, all at competitive pricing. Our Canadian customers know that we have not lived up to these service levels.

Product selection on canada.zappos.com is limited due to distribution agreements with the brands we sell in the United States. In addition, we have struggled with general uncertainty and unpredictability of delivering orders to our Canadian customers given customs and other logistics constraints.

We would like to thank our loyal Canadian customers and are sorry that we will not be able to serve you in the same way. Beginning April 1, 2011, we will no longer ship orders from canada.zappos.com. Some of you may have electronic certificates with open balances. If that is the case, please be sure to redeem them prior to April 1, 2011. Of course, we will still be able to accept orders originating from Canada and shipping to US addresses. Customers can always reach us 24/7 by calling 1-800-927-7671 or emailing cs@zappos.com.

So, why does the ad for Zappos appear if Facebook knows where I'm located and that Zappos won't ship to that location. Stuff like this drives me crazy and shows me that neither Facebook, nor the firms that advertise on the site, have a clue how to use the information that they have about site visitors.

What happened to the website?

Lid gripper from Scott Towels

This is a rubber jar gripper in the shape of a messy spill. The full text is, "If you spill it, you clean it. (The maid's on vacation)" Below that is the Scott Towels logo and at the bottom is the website address, "bigmess.ca".

The website is no longer active. This is due to a long and complicated process of brand name licensing. Scott Towels changed it's name to Sponge Towels and the Scott name disappeared temporarily from the paper towel market in Canada.

Now the Scott name has returned to Canada, but the towels are now known just as Scott, rather than Scott Towels.

I don't know why the former Canadian licensee of the Scott name allowed the bigmess.ca domain to lapse. Even with their products new name, SpongeTowels, the "big mess" concept would still be applicable.

I guess that there are thousands of these expired domains floating around. Consumer know the domain name, and may even have some piece of marketing schwag with the URL, but some shortsighted middle-manager decided that it was better to save $10.00 a year than to set up a re-direct to the corporation's website and capture any remaining consumer interest.

It's the "rock and roll" motorcycle

Harley-Davidson guitar pick

Lots of companies make money by licensing their brand name for products. In some cases these licensed products make no sense at all. On the other hand, you can get something like this.

This a licensing deal that actually makes sense. Harley-Davidson and rock and roll go together like bread and butter.

Why is this battery at Kal Tire?

DieHard battery at Kal Tire store

I was at a Kal Tire location to get a slow leak fixed. (Amazing service, but that is another story.) I saw this battery on the shelf. The DieHard brand is owned by KCD, a subsidiary of Sears. The letters stand for Kenmore, Craftsman, and Diehard. All three are three Sears brands.

Until I saw the DieHard battery at Kal Tire I had no idea that the brand was sold outside Sears locations. (Evidently the Diehard brand has been available at Kal Tire locations for a few years.)

Why would Sears sell its house brand of battery to other retailers? I can think of two reasons, one internal and one external.

Selling more batteries drives down the cost of production. (Bigger production runs are almost always cheaper.)

In the past many retailer's house brands have had a reputation for mediocre quality, while "national" brands were generally more respected. Almost everyone thinks that Heinz ketchup is better than the grocery store's house brand.

So, if Sears can transform Diehard from a house brand to a national brand it will increase sales volume and should help to keep costs in check. It might also help to improve consumer opinion of the brand and help sales all round.

Sears has also expanded the distribution channel for its Craftsman tool brand, I wonder if and when it will do the same with Kenmore appliances.

First "Cheerios", now "Special K"

"Special K" bowl at Walmart

Kellogg's stylized "K" is one of the most recognized letters in North American branding. The firm also features it prominently on the packaging for "Special K" breakfast cereal.

While lots of other cereals seem to be aimed at children, there are not many that are aimed specifically at women. Over the past few years, all of the advertising that I've seen to "Special K" have featured women in the campaigns.

Cereals aimed at children seem to fall into two camps. On one hand you have the sugar-coated, chemical laden horrors with cartoon characters on the front of the box. On the other hand you have a cereal such as "Cheerios" which toddlers seem to have an insatiable need to eat, and spread around the house.

A few years ago I saw a yellow plastic container, in the shape of a "Cheerio" at my local grocery store. Not only the perfect place to keep "Cherrios" when out for a stroll with your child, but a constant branded reminder of the food that should be inside.

While this "Special K" bowl seems like a good idea, I can't see parents using Special K as a mobile snack food. And that does not seem to be the point. If you look carefully you can see the spoon under the lid.

So is the woman too busy for breakfast expected to take this to work with them to eat "Special K" at their desk? Interesting idea, but I don't see it have the success of toddlers and "Cheerios".

Does your granny need saving?

"Nana Saver" at Walmart

So, what is a "Nana"? Is it a banana, or the name for your grandmother? When my daughter was learning to speak "Nana" was one her early words. (Along with "Mama", "Dada" and "Library".)

But this product requires that you recognize both the name and shape as referring to bananas. And with the shape, colour and name it is a pretty safe bet.

However, I didn't see any in the produce department and it makes me wonder why I only saw these in the cereal aisle at Walmart.

Please don't eat the crayons

Crayola "snack packer"

I wrote earlier about the Kraft string cheese that came with a coupon for $3.00 off on Crayola products. My concern was about the potential confusion of food and fun.

This only continues on the same potential problem. Is this plastic box a container for crayons or for snacks? Or can I just eat the crayons?

I know that I'm being pedantic, but that is what marketing is all about. Paying attention to all of those silly little details.

Who do you trust?

Direct mail piece from L'Occitane en Provence

This firm has a number of retail store and sells high quality, although rather expensive, toiletries. A few years ago I bought a Christmas gift for my wife at the shop and signed up for the mailing list.

In September I moved away from the coast to the much drier interior of British Columbia. As a result I am consuming great quanities of hand cream and my face is lapping up the moisturizer like never before.

So, is this Shea Butter hand cream any good? Can I take L'Occitane's word that this product is any good? I'd have to say yes, assuming that I put any faith in the opinions of Chatelaine and InStyle magazines. But the seal of approval from Chatelaine magazine does not carry much weight outside Canada, so I presume that L'Occitane must use different third-party recommendations in the other markets.

Makes perfect sense. If the consumer does not know the publication, why should they trust it?

Is Moby DIck a children's book?

Cozy Classics "Moby Dick" by Jack & Holman Wang

Last week I was at the local library and found two books in the "Cozy Classics" series. (http://www.mycozyclassics.com) According to the back cover of the book, "This new board book series presents well-loved stories through twelve child-friendly words and twelve needle-felted illustrations".

So, what are "twelve words" that sum up Moby Dick?

• sailor
• boat
• captain
• leg
• mad
• sail
• find
• whale
• chase
• smash
• sink
• float

The artists have made a somewhat puzzling choice of books. Others in the series include; Pride and Prejudice, Les Miserables, and War and Peace. Nothing like cutting hundreds of pages down to 12 words.

Overall I think these are an interesting idea. I can't wait to see them tackle Proust.

It came a long way

Coopers Sparkling Ale from Adelaide, South Australia

Yesterday, I bought a six-pack of my favourite beer. Coopers Sparking Ale is made in my home town, Adelaide, South Australia.

There are other better known Australian beers including the pretty unpalatable Fosters. Coopers is a far better beer, but it is produced by a family owned and run brewery. (In fact it is the largest remaining Australian-owned brewery.) Thus it lacks the marketing clout, and advertising budget, of the bigger breweries.

So, does it really need to come all the way from Adelaide? Yes. The beer is quite distinctive and deserves a bigger chunk of the market.

So, in answer to the inevitable questions. 1) No they didn't pay me. 2) No, I actually don't know anyone at Coopers, however my father did go to school with a member of the family. 3) Yes, I had a bottle with my dinner this evening. 4) Yes, you can go to the firm's website to find out more about the company, its beers and where to buy them in your neck of the woods. http://www.coopers150th.com.au/

Canada went metric, or perhaps not

Sign outside Clancy's Meat Company

Fresh Bacon $1.68 per 1/2 pound

In theory, food sold by weight in Canada is sold by metric measure. Yet the application of metric measure seems to be increasingly haphazard.

This is one of the most recent examples that I discovered. This shop, Clancy's in Kelowna, is selling bacon by the 1/2 pound. Usually meats are either sold by the kilo or hundred grams, or if the measure is imperial, meat is normally sold by the pound.

I'm not sure why they are selling by the 1/2 pound, perhaps the psychological benefit of a lower price will convince consumers to buy even if they don't fully realize that the price is for only a 1/2 pound.

Even at Chapters?

2012 Christmas season cup sleeve from Starbucks

For Christmas 2012, Starbucks selected the theme "Rekindle the Joy". Interesting approach and one that eliminates all references to the underlying religious meaning of Christmas.

But in Canada you will find Starbucks locations in Chapters/Indigo stores. And the eReader of choice there is the Kobo. And one of the big competitors for the Kobo is the Kindle from Amazon.

Can I be the only person who made this connection?

So, good for pretty much everything

Sign at Kelowna acupuncture clinic

I saw this sign in the front window of a Kelowna acupuncture clinic.

It would appear that acupuncture is the most effective medical treatment available. Either acupuncture really works for all of these conditions, or the clinic's practitioners are keen devotees of the placebo effect.

But don't knock the placebo effect. It is the most thoroughly tested medical treatment out there. And trial after trial has demonstrated that placebo's really do work. So, do we really care is acupuncture is only a placebo? If it gives people relief then they should enjoy the moment.

I have a hard time when acupuncture is proposed as a treatment for conflicting ailments. (Like, say, constipation and diarrhea, or both high blood pressure and low blood pressure.)

What does yellow mean?

Biohazard Waste sign at Summerland Memorial Health Centre

I obsess about colour and the associated meanings. I've written at length about the various and often confusing meanings associated with the colour red.

Today I'm looking at yellow. In Canada yellow is associated with the telephone book (Yellow Pages) and also cancer (Canadian Cancer Society). But for the medical profession yellow is to be avoided at all costs. The yellow garbage bag is how the biohazard waste is disposed of.

I wonder how that affects the habits of medical people shopping at Loblaw's stores?

Packaging for Loblaw's "no name" Chicken with Garlic Butter

It would be an interesting area to research.

Silly Licensing

Angry Birds Adhesive Bandages made by ASO LLC

With the exception of private label brands, the adhesive bandage market in North America is pretty much owned by Band-Aid and Elastoplast. So how can a company not known for its products break into the retail market and score some shelf space?

Licensing of course. So ASO licensed the Angry Birds characters.

Was it a success? Not completely. The 20 pack of bandages was on sale for $1.99. But for some reason my 4-year old daughter likes Angry Birds, a game she has never played. And as a practical consumer I'm happy to save money. So, my daughter's doll "Henry" now has an Angry Birds bandage on his forehead. He seems to be getting better.

Why the different colours?

Colour coded springs on a cafeteria cart at the Sumerland Health Care Centre

I was at the health care centre in Summerland last week. I saw these springs on the side of a cart holding plastic trays full of mugs.

I wondered why the springs were different colours. My guess is that the colours indicate the diameter and therefore the strength of the springs. Depending on the weight load in the trays the users can adjust the strength of the springs to yield the optimum performance.

Sort of clever as the paint is pretty durable, while some little tag might easily fall off.

There must be a card for that

"Fighting Cancer Together" greeting card

Last week I saw this greeting card in a local shop. The current statistics indicate that cancer is well on the way to afflicting 50% of the population.

Now, cancer may not kill you, but if present trends continue then about half of us can expect to get cancer in our lifetime. So I guess that seeing a card like this is a good thing. People are talking about cancer and the more we talk about it, the more research is likely to be funded.

But it was still a bit of a surprise to see this card in the store. Interesting that it is two women. I think that men are probably less likely to either share the news with friends.

Where is the machine's throat?

Error message on a Triton ATM

One of the problems of any industry is using specialized terminology that no one outside the industry understands.

So, my question is, where is the "throat" on an ATM? I presume it is where the machine either swallows deposits or vomits cash at the customer. I guess that I should just be thankful that the programmers didn't make use of the balance of the gastro-intestinal tract when naming parts of the machine.

All these businesses you didn't know existed

"Knife Pro" mobile knife sharpening van

When I teach Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing one of things that I tell students is that there is  huge volume of business, and a lot of specialized businesses, that the general public knows nothing about.

Does this van make house calls in residential neighbourhoods? I'm sure that it would, but the primary focus of the business is serving restaurants, hotels, and other food service businesses. The skills that make one a great chef are not necessarily the skills that make one a great knife sharpener. And even if you are both a great chef and a great knife sharpener, then surely you have better things to do with your time that sharpen knives.

So, small service businesses like this serve the niche needs of businesses like restaurants.

Buying Apple and avoiding Sony

Apple store at the Pacific Centre in Vancouver, December 16, 2012

Sony store at the Pacific Centre in Vancouver, December 16, 2012

I can remember when Sony ruled the consumer electronics industry. (And it is not all that long ago.) Today the brand still has value, but for some reason consumers are not making the connection with Sony that they once did. Sony ruled over all sorts of categories with superior products that consumers clamoured to buy. The Walkman virtually invented portable audio, the CD and DVD (both co-developed by Sony) dramatically changed the consumer electronics landscape.

So how did Sony fall so out of favour? I think that part of the problem has to do with the breadth of Sony's businesses. If the company makes money selling music and movies, the heads of those divisions will fight tooth and nail to prevent the release of any hardware that makes it easy for consumers to listen to music or watch movies without paying. (And Sony's hideous and restrictive adventures with digital audio turned a lot of people off.)

Apple's approach seems to have been focused on making life easy for the consumer. If the consumer has a good experience they will keep coming back.

Happy and loyal customers are your best salespeople.

Who uses telephone books?

InfoTel telephone books in the lobby

These 14 telephone books were delivered to my apartment building in early December. A month later there are still 11 books left.

I have to say that the telephone book, at least for people under 30, is pretty much useless. I wonder how much longer InfoTel will continue to print and distribute books. (And how much longer advertisers will continue to pay for ads in telephone books when such a small percentage of the books actually end up in the hands of consumers.)

Can you keep them shopping in the middle of a construction zone?

Signs on Bernard Avenue in Kelowna

I'm not saying that the city of Kelowna does not care what happens to the retailer that are affected by the construction project, but I wonder what effect these signs had. The retail stores in the affected blocks often seemed to be pretty deserted. That may have been the time of year as the construction started in September.

For retailers it is tough to pick the ideal time to do construction on the street in front of the shop. Ideally most retailers would like the entire project to have been completed just before they moved in. However, in the case of the Bernard Avenue construction, the underground infrastructure was in pretty sad shape and needed replacement.

It is not unlike the old maxim about trees. What is the best time to plant a tree? 40 years ago. What is the second best time? Today.

For the retailers the best time to rip up the road was 10 or 20 years ago. But if it was not done in 2002, then doing it in 2012 was probably better than waiting for a few years until the system failures become more frequent and the road gets torn up in the middle of tourist season.

One way to try to get the shoppers to keep coming downtown

 

Parking metres in downtown Kelowna

Close-up of the sticker on a parking metre in downtown Kelowna

Like many car-centred cities, Kelowna has a problem keeping consumers downtown. In the summer it is not as much of an issue as downtown is right next to the lake. As you might expect in a summer tourist town, the lake and the adjacent downtown shops attract a lot of attention.

But, come Labour Day and the departure of the tourists the downtown shops go into a bit of a slow period. In 2012, the situation was made even worse by a major constriction project that saw the main street, Bernard, ripped up for three months.

This "FREE Saturday Parking" offer has evidently been going on for a couple of years in Kelowna.

I think it is a great idea. Even if it has little effect, the city can be seen to be doing something to support the downtown businesses. Kelowna's main shopping mall, Orchard Park, seems very similar to scores of other malls across Canada with a pretty generic assortment of retailers. As in many other cities, the interesting independent retailers are found downtown. They deserve your business and I applaud the city for supporting them.

New Year, New Posts (Same old questions)

First of all, an answer to a question. How does a regular and usually reliable blogger "fall off the wagon"? In a word; grading.

The end of the academic term is rather busy time, and a big pile of grading, combined with the inevitable computer meltdown, led to me concentrating on grading rather than keeping this blog up to date. I'll endeavour to do better this year. I did take lots of photographs over the Christmas break, so I have plenty of raw material ready to go.

So let's start with a seasonal offering.




"Winter Gas" sign on a pump at a Petro-Canada station in Kelowna



pump at Petro-Canada station in Kelowna

When I saw this I had a couple of thoughts. How do you define "winter" in a country as climatically diverse as Canada? How does a firm like Petro-Canada change the formulation of its gasoline for winter?

The start of winter in Vancouver and Victoria heralds the arrival of the occasional snowfall and some sub-freezing temperatures, while in far northern communities that is what you might expect on a summer day.

Kelowna, where this photo was taken, has what my father would describe as an "honest winter". Sub-freezing temperatures, outdoor skating, and some snow.

I wonder what "extra protection" this "Winter Gas " provides and how the formulation changes from place to place in Canada? And if "Winter Gas" is provided year round to northern communities?

If "Winter Gas" is both a consumer benefit and a competitive advantage then Petro-Canada needs to do a better job of explaining the benefit.