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Lexmark International is one of the world’s leading makers of computer printers had a problem.  While slow to come around, the trend to the paperless office is real.  That trend significantly reduced demand for printers.  So Lexmark adapted — and offers its customers services to help them print less.  Lexmark helped Coca Cola save $11 million over five years — and sold them 3800 new mostly Lexmark printers.

This article, “After a Jam, Lexmark Turns to Services” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, August 26, 2010) provides examples for use when talking about goods and services or the product life cycle — as printers settle well into market maturity stage.  It is also interesting to think about this change in the context of personal selling — where Lexmark no doubt had to change its personal selling strategy to a consultative selling approach.

We are all familiar, at least with the concept, of dynamic (or time-based) pricing.  Airlines are the most common example, raising and lowering fares over time on a particular flight to optimize the number of passengers and profits.  Many services have very low marginal costs — for example it costs very little to add one more passenger to a flight that is not full.  Well now a recently minted Economics PhD has developed models to do this for sports tickets — and the San Francisco Giants (baseball) are using it to adjust prices.  It is nice to give an example that is not from the airline industry.  Check out.  “Pricing Baseball Tickets Like Airline Seats” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, May 20, 2010).

I find that students enjoy hearing about “non-traditional” marketing examples.  I just listened to a story on NPR’s Morning Edition that describes the use of a “speed dating” format to connect doctors with patients – “Hospital Attracts Patients with Doctor ‘Speed Dating,’” (May 18, 2010).  A follow-on story was critical of the use of advertising by hospitals, “Tip:  Hospitals Try PSAs Before Spending on Ads,” (May 18, 2010).

My previous post linked to an article that pointed out how B2B buyers are likely to Google a prospective supplier — and what turns up is your reputation.  And a single bad act can outweigh many good acts — just ask Jet Blue.  Virgin America had their reputation damaged last week.  Once again we see the role of social media in spreading word of “bad acts” far and wide.  I like that Sviokla’s post on an HBR blog, “Real-time Brand Management — Lessons from Virgin America’s Hellish Flight“  (March 18, 2010) provides a nice analysis and implications for marketing managers.  The story addresses brand management, service failure and recovery, and social media.

“Distracted Customers’ Wait Times Fly,” from Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. Thanks to Shuoyang Zhang for this suggestion.  Click through for a listen.

A study in the journal NeuroQuantology found that people forced to wait, for example in line, experienced the time spent as being far less if they were amused and distracted. Cynthia Graber reports.

This is a new podcast I will have to add to my playlist.  I already listen to the 60-Second Pscyh for psychology research.  If you are a podcast listener and science lover — check these out.

My former colleague Jim Pailin, who was in the PhD program with me at North Carolina, worked on a dissertation in this area almost 20 years ago.  And it is still true, “Happy Employees Create Better Customer Experiences” (Customer Experience Matters blog, February 1, 2010).   Jim was particularly interested in looking at this for services — and I am sure that happy employees matter even more in service businesses.  From Bruce Temkin’s blog post you can find a link to Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 best companies to work for.

This is actually “old news” by now (it was hot in spring 2009) — but I missed it the first time around and maybe you did as well.  It shows how the web can amplify the voice of a single complaining customer.  The video has more than 6 million views!  The story is best told by the protagonist, musician Dave Carroll, in his own words, copied from his website and quoted below.  I have placed the first video “United Breaks Guitars” below that.

“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.”

Verizon continues to run ads that promote its superior 3G network.  The 3G network allows simultaneous speech and data transmission at higher speeds — it is what you need to surf the web from your phone.   We have reported on this subject in a previous blog post (the previous post now includes links to articles on the subsequent legal battle).

This is a great example of a marketer identifying a competitor’s weakness (AT&T’s 3G network has significantly less coverage than Verizon and is a source of complaints of many iPhone customers).  Of course part of the goal is to distract customers from Verizon’s own weakness — Verizon doesn’t carry the most popular smart (surf the web) phone the Apple iPhone (although its recently Droid has received some positive reviews following its recent release.   The ad below is Verizon’s latest salvo in the battle.

UPDATE 11-22:  AT&T responds to Verizon.  How well do you think it works?  Who is winning this battle?  And should AT&T be replying to Verizon?

ESPN has begun to develop locally focused websites. This WSJ.com video,”ESPN is taking over Sports Journalism Everywhere,” (0:37, The Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2009) describes a new ESPN product. So for example, ESPN Chicago has news about Chicago sports teams. This brand extension provides new competition for local newspapers and television stations. This is a nice example of market segmentation with a nontraditional product. You might ask students if they think this will be successful? How should a local newspaper respond?

This video “Exotic Car Rentals Rev Up,” (3:05 at CNN.com, September 9, 2009) describes a new business, Gotham Dream Cars, which rents high-end and exotic sports cars in New York and Miami.  It hopes to eventually go national.  The short video could prompt a discussion of targeting, product, and price.  Will the company will be successful?  What cities should Gotham Dream Cars target?