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“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?

This short (2:47) video, “Doggy Day Care Beats Recession,” from CNN.com (July 23, 2009), provides a nice supplment to one of the great new videos in our books’ video package.  I really like “Targeting the Premium Dog Market:  Cashing in on ‘Doggy’ Love”  – and students can relate to it as well.  This provides a confirmation or shorter alternative and addresses issues of consumer behavior, product (service) design, and pricing.