Pubs, Inns, Wi Fi and Stowaways

I approached an interesting note written by Mariano Pantenetti especially for the blog.



May have noticed (or suffered), at some point (usually urgent) when they needed to sit in a bar to do some urgent work, or enter your Wi Fi Notebook, which all seats were occupied, even those which whom used does not have any drink in front of him to justify the use of facilities, or otherwise, are on the table the remains of a lean to the clear coffee was drunk at the very least makes some long hours.

The dilemma of the stowaway is the enjoyment of public property by individuals who use them either on their part fair share as paid or avoiding the cost of their share.

Although the case arose in the first paragraph, we are clearly looking at a private good, use that gives the time over which provides the service seems to be analyzed from the perspective of the free rider problem.

The existence of stowaways leads inevitably to a loss of productivity, since many more individuals are "fed" a well thought originally to fewer participants.
It takes an excessive use of common property.

Trying to be Pareto efficient is that I consider as far as the comfort of who first occupied the chair does not conflict with the convenience of those who come second and (after a logical time) starts to pay the cost of discomfort.
Find another bar also has a cost for those who came second.
These costs, eventually moving to the owner of the establishment because the customer alerted of this situation will certainly look for an open bar, efficiently avoiding being the second.

Find a balance then represents a potential improvement in the outcome of any situation that arises as Pareto-efficient, where the improvement of one of the agent is not possible without harming the other. A situation that is optimal from the standpoint of utility.

Getting in the skin of who should manage a bar, restaurant or similar, ask to what extent it is efficient to give free will to decide who will occupy a table for a long period of time, so that others with the intention to consume are far from the place or simply do not enter.
Are these first considered stowaways?
It could be argued that the former may present long-term profitability (are customers of the house), while the latter only have occasional use and is difficult to quantify their income in perpetuity.

Some retailers like Havanna coffee seem to have realized this and delivered a limited service (in time) of Wi Fi, forcing the start following products for more time consuming or simply leave.
This does not limit the time of those who read all the newspaper, every magazine, they receive visits and make your office coffee, for the modest sum of about ten pesos in 6 hours.

On this situation, seem to have more experience that bars restaurants, experts often drive the customers to have on board.

I think this is a new consumer and a new way of delivering service, so I do not see a clear answer to the dilemma posed.
Therefore it seems best in this first instance to perform some testing activities, analyze, think about trying not to neglect the customer above all else. But which one? Which is two hours ago with your coffee and newspaper or waiting.

The differentiation is essential to escape the price war

When a person has a business idea because it senses that there is great potential in it often makes the mistake of wanting to copy the entire competition, to be near her to grab their customers and offer a lower price to enter and win them all .

This pathway probably leads to the competitor, in turn, lower theEstrategia de diferenciacions prices and this becomes a cycle, in a price war that ultimately led the two to charge the least for their products and not getting expected profits.

Columbia Ideas at Work Business School published an article on the studies currently performed by the business and economics professor at the university, Michael Riordan, using game theory to know how to react to business owners when new firms enter the market to compete .

Riordan sums it up this way: "The key issue is to design products to avoid direct competition, so that there is a substantial number of consumers in the market that are more or less indifferent between their product line and its competitor . Because if any, will be tempting to draw them through lower prices. "




Enter the market without causing a price war

Riordan says that if it is known to enter the market with a well differentiated product that is not interchangeable with the competition and, therefore, not so sensitive to price changes, it is likely that prices, rather than lower, increase because everyone will be getting the most out of your segment.

This may be clearer with the example mentioned in the article by Columbia Ideas at Work, under which an aspiring entrepreneur coffee business is a very crowded near a college where many people walk, and decides to open a coffee business the entire front, across the street.

The reaction of the old business is to reduce prices to fight for their customers, leading to the new employer also decrease, obtaining much lower profit margins than expected.

But the proposal discussed in the article is that if the new owner decides to enter differentiated, can open a tea shop looking to attract that segment of customers in the coffee shop they prefer the new product and that does not change from differences in the price, which would provide incentives to the former business owner to lower their prices, and, conversely, could lead to upload them to maximize earnings from coffee drinkers.

According to Riordan, "The profit-maximizing price of the establishment of coffee depends on the price charged by the establishment of tea, and vice versa" and it will be agreeing to stable prices.

Product differentiation strategies

According to these studies, before entering a market, there are three questions that must be considered in order to create a product differentiation strategy that maximizes profits:

1. Is there a customer segment that is not well served by existing firms? There are consumers of all kinds, some are willing to pay more for certain other products undecided driven by lower prices. If you can create a product with added value for those customers who are willing to pay more for it, you can capture some of that value through higher earnings.

2. How much difference should be within their own product line? Advanced segmentation creates value for customers because they feel they are offered something to measure, but be careful with the way in which this segmentation affects other products and the level of variety to another profitable.

3. How will existing firms respond to new business entry into the market? If many customers see the new product as a possible replacement of the former, the owner of the latter will lower prices. But to avoid this, you can segment the product so that customers prefer one or the other, regardless of price.

The key is to offer a unique product that meets specific consumer needs and have added value for which they are willing to pay, as this is what ensures the success and permanence of the product without relying on other bids.

In the words of Riordan "What makes the entrance, ideally, is to reorganize the consumer in the market, so that the new consumer segmentation among firms, they are less price sensitive."

The new world of marketing and advertising

If someone fell asleep during the last five years and suddenly woke up in 2010, it would quickly realize that the world of marketing and advertising has changed dramatically in three ways. Martin LindstromThe Neuro-Marketing expert, Explains what happened.



1. Communication and research and subliminal or subconscious part of the vocabulary of most marketers. Do not fall into the trap of believing that conventional research methods work. Over 80% of the daily decisions arise in the non-conscious brain. If we trust these numbers, and all studies show that we must, then 2010 is the year that marketers will be forced to find alternative research methods to discover the subconscious processes involved in making decisions.


2. The power has shifted from the brand to customers - even the most powerful brands know that successful campaigns must consistently catch the customers, which in turn will use their powerful ability to spread through word of mouth. " 2010 will also be the year that marketers will have to sacrifice your brand by the customer. What does this mean? It is increasingly common to see how the marks are destroyed by clients expressing their anger or frustration online. The value of the shares of Domino's Pizza dropped by 10% when two angry customers rose video to YouTube. How can large organizations, which rarely can turn something in a few hours, withstand such attacks? Brands have to find a way to do just that.


3. 2010 seems to be dominated by guilt. Guilt for spending money, blame for polluting the world, and finally, blame the parents as their children are locked in their world online, away from the traditional values ​​that were once the exclusive domain of families. This year, marketers must learn to take advantage of this guilt as never before. This is the sad reality. Buyology draft taught us that fear is one of the strongest elements in building a brand. Fear is closely associated with guilt, and in so far as the world turns faster and faster on itself, the blame is more and more power. The brands that can cause guilt - or, better still, eliminate guilt - will be the winners.

New technologies, new business

The Brazilian Mauricio Machado, 35, always wanted to combine his passion for literature with a good deal, and he got on the Internet. In mid-2005, and after the collapse of Banco Santos Brazil, where he worked in the international arena, the company created Integrare Machado Publishing, a publisher of books páginque, as its name implies, incorporates in its chain to authors, readers and booksellers, and also is linked to social responsibility, all on a virtual platform. "It's an old dream of mine and my family," says Machado. "We believe in making a different publisher, with a business plan that did not exist in Brazil."

This is key to using the Internet as a platform for its operating model. Through its website Authors can track the sales of its items (the information is renewed monthly), monitor their marketing campaigns and even to know what cities have sold more books or what the preferred age range. For their part, readers who buy them may have access to digital conversations with the authors that last 20 minutes on average, meet their careers and even informed of the annual agenda of events and visits within the country if they want to keep track of them or go to his talks. Meanwhile, booksellers can also feed back more information, short stories in digital video where the authors explain the contents of their books for the bookseller can offer more certainty to the public indicated. In addition, sellers of fish have a space on the page with links to their websites so that readers see prices or buy the publications that are offered online.

The CD is no longer business in Britain

The CD is no longer heard as before. At least that is happening in Britain, where the musicians get more revenue from internet and radio, recorded music sales. This was announced by the alliance MCPS-PRS, Which handles copyright in the music industry in the country.

The cold numbers show that during 2007 in the UK, the radio and Internet downloads for a profit totaled 707.5 million euros. According to the agency states in its websiteIn 2007 alone increased by 54% the turnover of the online downloads.

Radios and televisions, along with internet, contributed € 195.7 million, up 8% over 2006, with significant growth of online downloads, whose turnover increased by 54%, led by the iTunes platform. However, the MCPS-PRS said that revenue from Internet (€ 12.6 million) still remain a small weight in total of this group.

Physical products like CDs and DVDs, which had always been a major source of income for musicians in the country, contributed € 191.1 million last year 11% less than last year.

"Much has been written about the state of the music industry, but these results show the good health of the sector, an increase of revenue in most areas," said CEO of MCPS-PRS, Steve Porter.

The alliance said the sharp fall in CD sales was partly offset by the sale of other physical products such as USB drives with built-in songs.

Google's mobile phone is not multitouch, because Apple does not want

The main complaint from critics of the Android G1, the first mobile phone designed by Google, manufactured by HTC and distributed exclusively for the United States by the German T-Mobile, has already been answered: if this phone that wants to be the future is multi- touch, as if what is Apple's iPhone is only because the finder does not want to anger the company that runs Google Jobs.Estrategia Steve

It is considered multi-touch to any touchscreen phone that is able to process orders received from its sensors several fingers of the user ... at a time. That ability is what allows, for example, zoom in and zoom photos on an iPhone using the thumb and forefinger of one hand.

And no one understood well until now why Google had resigned to making your touch phone was also multi-touch. Now, a report in a specialized account how American's own brand of apple begged the Android development team that did not include this capability in the design of its new generation of mobile phones (which the G1 is just the first member .)

The main reasons why the giant gave information on the Internet without question appear to be two. First, both brands share the common goal to overthrow Microsoft. And second, that Apple is preparing a legal barrage against those who dare to use that technology in other devices.

Apple itself warned of the consequences in the final presentation of business results in a message that everyone understood that was directed at Palm, to use multi-touch technology in its new Intelligent Mobile Pre. "We will use every weapon at our disposal," said then one of its top officials.

The e-learning revolution

The concept of Information Society was created from the central role that was taking the information into the new routines of individuals, companies and countries, driven also by new technologies and the potential of internet and various electronic media.

The e-Learning has become a real and very valuable option for many companies and universities as well as employees and students in the world who have found a way to continue their education costs and saving time and allowing greater flexibility better suit their lifestyles.

To this is added the possibility for people to interact with other cultures and to build web content, which means that there is an enormous wealth of sources and a relatively quick update content.

It is, on the one hand, distance education self-directed, which is one in which there are separate training materials, when the user logs on and is content, materials and assessments, and, second, distance education directed that is where we exploit different tools such as chats, forums and video, and built various learning activities.



estartegia de elearning
In the U.S., for example, according to a study by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the growth of American student incorporating online education exceeds 10% annually.

Save time and money

In times of economic crisis many companies and universities have to cut expenses while working and, therefore, what they should do is get a lot less. The e-Learning becomes easy for the student because it is in their own time and less cost, but at the same time, for companies and universities and that means training and education, respectively, of an easier way for people who are hiring and receiving throughout the year, virtually without removing them from their jobs or their country of residence.

On one side are the universities, who are increasingly migrating towards providing most of its distance learning programs and even have races now face that have online activities, and, secondly, there are enterprises in which there are different forms of e-Learning as the company's own content that are closed to the public and administered by human resources, continuing professional development of employees, and courses of welfare for workers and their families.

He explained to Tendencias21 Bodil Maul, manager of corporate accounts Netting Solutions with extensive experience in implementing e-Learning solutions for multinational companies, "Today, many multinationals have e-Learning programs as part of its training strategy and some have their own platforms (LMS) and content developed internally and others choose to outsourcing. "

Ninette Gaxiola, corporate education coordinator Netting Solutions company that provides solutions for audiences in Latin America, North America and Europe, said in turn to Tendencias21: "The e-Learning, understood as the possibility of incorporating new information technologies and communication in the processes of production, transmission and management of knowledge gives us the opportunity to perform this task in a more effective, cost effective and tailored to the needs of a society in which 2.0 technology allows us to cooperate actively. It is not only to make available to staff online courses, but to identify and build, with the support of experts, the strategy that meets the needs of each group integrating the most useful technological elements for each goal and each occasion. "

"Something fundamental is to have a strategy that you know exactly why you want to use this medium of education and training, and, likewise, have clear metrics to evaluate their impact on the organization and its users," says Maul.

The mobile world

And is that e-Learning is part of a set of technologies, media, tools and strategies in today's world, a "mobile world" in which people are "on the go, do not stop, but continue their work from wherever they are. Many large companies globally accepted and even offer their employees the option of working from home, and expected everything to be faster and more efficient, no matter where or how.

Keep in mind that a large variety of these electronic tools not only work on computers, but also from mobile devices, which really makes many people to access them and can work in their training from the most unexpected places.

Today, people want flexibility and speed, you have the option to bring all its business at the leading lifestyle, work and take advantage of free time while traveling, and being able to simultaneously combine personal and educational activities that contribute to the improvement.

In short, there are many choices you have those who really are willing to learn without being affected daily activities and free time. It's a moving world where more and less important where, when and how.