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The miraculous illusion of Amazon's free shipping
People are funny about perceiving value. We all want value -- we run mental calculators in our minds, trying to predict transactions of love or money in our favor, and yet typically we suck at this. In...
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Prediction markets as a form of artificial intelligence
As the current political race nears the finish line, here's a refresher course on prediction markets. I wrote this column for Businessweek back in October 2008, a month before Barack Obama was elected...
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The novelty effect
This is a story about why stories no longer hold your interest.About 30 years ago Cormac McCarthy sat down to write "Blood Meridian," a gruesome Western tale with evocation like this:"That night they...
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Meet McDonald's TV. It's worth a quarter billion dollars.
McDonald's has been on a tear lately. Its stock has nearly tripled since 2006, global revenue is up to $27 billion, and more than 45% of its restaurants have been upgraded from the stale plastic of...
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Why product ideas scale (a lesson from bicycle brakes)
If you want to know how to make your product reach all of humanity, you need to think about God, bicycles and viruses.Richard Dawkins didn't believe in God but he did coin the concept of a meme, a...
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Facebook's $7 Trojan horse (watch out, Amazon)
Mark Zuckerberg, how investors have underestimated you.Depending on how you look at it, Facebook is either on a tear or washed up. eMarketer predicts Facebook will generate $5 billion in revenue this...
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The computer design has left the building
Poor Apple. Hours after it announced a much-awaited smaller iPad (plus a sexier, thinner iMac), Wall Street pushed its stock down 3%, perhaps disenchanted at the relatively high iPad Mini price of...
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Upscale Quartz skips banners, goes mobile first
This is rather interesting. David Bradley, chief of Atlantic Media (which publishes The Atlantic), has launched a new elite business publication that is already challenging The Economist. In September...
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Hm. What if Apple's Siri is learning from us?
While many of you ask Siri questions on your iPhones, have you ever considered that Siri may be monitoring you as well ... and getting smarter because of what you ask? I wrote over at Google+ a while...
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What's wrong with Groupon?
Poor Groupon. The stock price of the cost-cutting online coupon service has plummeted below $3, down nearly 90% from its IPO launch high. Nearly two years ago I dissected the pitfalls of Groupon's...
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Facebook's new matchback tracking finds you at the mall
Facebook has made an old marketing measurement trick new again, getting many marketers excited that it could finally match online ad impressions to offline shopping behavior for better ROI...
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Tis the season for fake savings
Savings is such a marketing game. Nothing is ever 30% or 40% off, and yet consumers respond in droves when retailers announce "savings" or "discounts." Why is this so?About 30 years ago behavioral...
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How to make $382,000 before the end of the world
We don't know if Damian Campbell makes $382,000 a year from his Facebook campaign. We do know his ad and web landing page, shown here, are pretty ugly, with enough disparate font treatments to send...
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PETA pulls a porn site bait-and-switch
Oh, the cleverness. PETA, the pro-animal-rights organization known for racy ads showing naked people who refuse to wear fur, teased the major media outlets this week with news it was launching a real...
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The NRA goes silent. Is this good strategy?
That quiet sound you hear is the NRA not saying anything ... which makes an interesting case study. Regardless of your politics or emotions about the tragedy in Newtown, Conn. (which happened just...
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Ho ho ho, it's finally time to shop inside Facebook
Forget advertising revenue. The real money play for Facebook may be breaking into e-commerce.Facebook has launched holiday promotions for its online gift service -- a brilliant ploy, because it adds a...
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Chevron's use of global warming for bold branding
Mention climate change and you'll get hot responses from some conservatives who believe the risk is falsified, earth's temperatures are not rising, satellite data is fudged and human-made CO2 and...
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The advertising challenge of concurrent media use
Recent media research points to a trend: U.S. consumers are using tablets or smartphones at the exact same time they watch television. Nielsen reports that TV use is still high in the U.S., with the...
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In group decisions, beware the risk of propinquity
A riff on group dynamics that could save your next meeting.Decisions are difficult in business because hierarchies and org structures, however well thought out, culminate in small groups trying to...
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Stop & Shop's mesmerizing 1% gasoline giveaway
Stop & Shop, the northeastern U.S. grocery chain, has created a fascinating loyalty program tied to gasoline. If you use a loyalty card to buy groceries, you can later swipe that card at...
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