Someone may care, but I don't

"Game of Thrones" wine display, LCBO, Toronto 

"Game of Thrones" wine display, LCBO, Toronto

"Game of Thrones" wine display, LCBO, Toronto

I saw these wines on the shelf at an LCBO store in Toronto. I know that licensing can help sales, but in my experience there should be some connection between the licensor and the product. Michael Jordan basketball shoes for Nike are a logical fit. (Jordan shoes have over 10% of the US athletic shoe market, about the same share as Adidas.) This wine is not a logical fit.

A $30 "red blend" from a winery I've never tried before? GQ gave the wines a fairly poor review, "Sommelier tested. Not necessarily sommelier approved". (Source" https://www.gq.com/story/is-the-game-of-thrones-wine-actually-good)

So, an interesting piece of licensing, but the general consensus seems to be that decidedly average wine.

is

They used to be $16.00, then they were $5.00. I wonder how much they sell for now?

Indigo Fidget Spinner package (Obverse)

Indigo Fidget Spinner package (Obverse)

I found this at an Indigo store in August 2017. Everyone could see that the party was over. One day someone will write their thesis on the growth and decline of these toys, but until them they are an object lesson in the fickleness of children's tastes.

Form their start in February 2017, by the beginning of summer interest in the fidget spinner was  fading fast, and by November interest in the fidget spinner seems to have completely died. I can only assume that the buyers at Indigo thought that that the spinner was here to stay. No such luck.

Easy to collect, hard to trust

happy-or-not survey device, Toronto

happy-or-not survey device, Toronto (Detail)

I saw this device in a store in Toronto in the summer of 2017. This does make collecting customer information a simple and automated process.

I do like the at the scale has four choices, so the customer has to indicate if the experience was positive or negative. And the fact that the positive and negative responses are mirror images of one another is great. Simple and easy to understand. Green means good and red means bad.

But collection of survey data is about two different factors. Quality and quantity. This device can improve the quantity, but as it is unattended can it really improve the quality? The fact that the scale is balanced is great, but there is no check on the people actually completing the survey. (I wonder how many troublemakers just randomly press one of the buttons? I know as a child I would have done it.)

So, full marks for ease of use and having a balanced and easy to understand response scale, but I'll have to make a deduction for the quality of data collected.

How hard would it really be?

Ryobi P701G rechargeable flashlight
(Source: https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/p.one-18v-li-ion-ultimate-combo-kit-6-tool.1000751346.html)

Light bulb replacement instructions, Ryobi P701G flashlight

Flashlights need to two things, batteries and bulbs. In this case the battery power is provided by a rechargeable battery and a recharger provided in the 6-tool kit. The bulb on the other hand is a consumable and eventually must be replaced.

A customer would reasonably expect to be able to buy replacement bulbs from the place that sold the flashlight in the first place, Home Depot.

But Home Depot does not see it that way. And the staff in the poorly named "Customer Support" department made it abundantly clear that once they sold the flashlight that was the end of Home Depot's interest in you.

Home Depot has not make the same decision about other consumables such as drill bits and saw blades, but for some reason the light bulb is not sold at the store.

When I enquired the response I got was, "The replacement light-bulbs for the Ryobi P701G flashligh (sic), you are interested in, is currently not available to purchase through Home Depot. We invite you to communicate with Ryobi-the manufacturer at 1-800-525-2579 as their agents are better to indicate how-through which channels-you can procure the said bulb."

What a pain! If I wanted to deal with the manufacturer I would not have bought the light from Home Depot in the first place. Perhaps in future I will bypass the retailer and deal direct with the brand. A retailer like Home Depot seems like it is actually not that interested in dealing with customers.

How to deal with a short shelf life

Marking on the exterior of a box of Halloween merchandise at Dollarama, Vancouver

Seasonal merchandise is exactly that, seasonal. Once the season is over the merchandise loses values every day. The Halloween candies can be sold at a discount. At Dollarama the discount on Halloweeen merchandise usually 50% on November 1st. But the Halloween decorations are of almost no interest to anyone the day after.

All merchandise goes through the stages of the product life cycle; Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. And the problem for a retailer like Dollarma, that does a steady trade in seasonal merchandise, is that retail space is in short supply and once the season is over the retailer must make room for the next season, in this case Christmas.

So the worst thing that could happen is to find a bunch of Halloween merchandise on the shelves on November 1st. This sort of graphic on the cartons probably goes a long way to reducing the likelihood that the staff, probably paid close to minimum wage, will overlook boxes in the stockroom.

The best way to solve a problem is to make sure that it does not happen in the first place. I'd say task accomplished.

The party is truly over

New sales price sign for Fidget Spinners, Vancouver, BC

I knew this day was coming. The fidget spinner is the classic toy fad. And like all products, fads go through the stages of the product life cycle; introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. But with fads the maturity phase is very short, so the growth is very fast the decline is similarly rapid. (In this case the start of the introduction was February 2017 and the depths of the decline have been reached in October 2017.)

The prices started high, went up, and have now crashed. The fidget spiders at this store used to to $10.00 each, but given the complete collapse of the market, the price has been slashed to $1.00 and the retailer could not be bothered to print up a new sign. They just got out a black marker and changed the selling price form $10.00 to $1.00.

And to further confirm the demise of the fidget spinner, I've started to see them turn up in thrift stores.

Clutching at straws

Dairyland 2% Milk

These days every brand is trying to stand out. Whether it be the limited edition running shoes by Adidas, the celebrity-endorsed clothing collection at H&M, or the special holiday coffee, every brand try to make itself special.

But what is special about a milk carton? This is a special "Limited Edition Packaging". Who cares? Who is going to keep carton this when it's empty? Will this change the consumer's buying habits? I doubt it. I think that when it is empty it is going to straight into the recycling bin.

Sometime I just have to sigh, roll my eyes, and shrug my shoulders.

This survey is filled with bias and the results will not be trustworthy

Sign promoting survey at Douglas College, New Westminster

Benjamin Disraeli is supposed to have said, "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics". There are a few ways to ensure that a survey gets the results you want. This survey seems to have focused on building bias into the potential responses.

Survey for Chartwell's services at Douglas College

The middle value on a survey that uses a scale with an odd number of potential responses should be neutral. (So, for a five point scale there should be two positive, two negative and one neutral) There is a well documented preference for survey respondents to opt for the middle option. In this case that middle option is "Good",  a positive response.

Survey for Chartwell's services at Douglas College

These questions have a Likert scale. This means that a statement is presented and there are five potential responses for the person completing the survey. If this survey was designed to be bias-free the responses would be; Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree not Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.  Again the middle option in this survey has a positive bias, "Somewhat Agree" when it should be "Neither Agree nor Disagree".

So, when the results come out no one should be surprised that the dining services are rated higher than the users expect. If you cook the survey you cook the results.

Now I just need to find that darn airport

Add by Outbrain, found on http://www.foodandwine.com

According to this advertisement I can "Find cheap flights from Bowen Island on Ladybug.com". That is great news. Up until now anyone wanting to fly from Bowen island has had to take a ferry and then go over three bridges to get to the airport. (Or take a seaplane that looks nothing like the jet in the picture.)

Of course there is no airport on Bowen Island and the advertisement has been generated and "personalized" based on my computer's location. But Outbrain's advertisement generator should be smart enough to know the name of the nearest airport and feed that information to Ladybug. As it is both Ladybug and Outbrain look a bit foolish. (Or perhaps this is just me being pedantic again.)