Leisha & Pears

Leisha is a my daughter and Pears is premium brand of soap from the Unilever company. So what is the relationship between the two?
Leisha made her debut as a model in the tvc commerical and print advertisement of Pears soap ! Here is the link to the advt : http://www.tinyurl.com/leishadogra
She makes me proud !

The Economics of Consumer-Supplier: Indian Perspective-1

Consumer is King (maybe in his own home!!) Here are two corporate airlines (http://tinyurl.com/7fslcd) finding technical reasons which have no concern with the consumer to not pass thru cost benefits of falling production cost. If they are so concerned about consumers benefits that they advocate - then they should transparently pass thru the real costs which are of third party. Well, they do not have the systems to do it - then they need to invest in those. Consumers will want and demand transparency in costs - Value that they pay for. When? Sooner than we know. (Vested interest declaration : I avoid both these airlines 100%!!)

update : 29 Dec 2008

Both the airlines have today announced cut in base fares ...finally the market forces force them to do it without any other reason to bank on.

Does Feedback Work ?

I am doing an experiment with truth. A market leader in cinemas in India offers on-line booking of tickets. Wow - that is good. But it charges a service charge for the ticket. And, beyond that one has to again to the ticket counter and collect the ticket spending ~10/15 mins time. Not at all comfortable, cheap or friendly method to get a customer like me!
So i have explained this issue and writtent to the CEO and COO of the company. This by writing to their official emails and on their corporate website feedback form. Now wait and watch!!
The questions that are going thru my head at this moment are :

• will I single handedly be able to change the way a company looks at customers and services models?
• What will I do if they will not do anything w.r.t. my feedback or give me a 'reason' for why it is needed?

Right now, i will wait for the river to come and then decide how to cross it?

CI

It was way back in the days of MBA (1988-90)college that i read Micheal Porter talk about competition, competition analysis and its relevance to businesses. Now more appropriately termed as Competition Intelligence or simply CI. It was one of the things that interested me and i have been fortunate to be able to imbibe myself in it.
When i was in sales it was tactical CI; then in pre-sales consulting it was strategic CI and so i have been alternating between the two.
Among the current set of professionals who are practicing CI and evangelising them is Arik Johnson. I met about 2 years back when i attended a program on CI by him and there is no looking back. Thanks Arik.
A good resource for those interested in CI is scip.org.