When instant coffee becomes a gourmet standard for home-brewed coffee the times have certainly changed about the perfect cup. Keurig, a brand best known for single cup brewing systems, is owned by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) and held roughly 80 percent of the US market for single-serve coffee category, making it a desirable, acquisition target for larger consumer beverage companies such as Coca-Cola or Nestlé. But, that was more than a year ago when its shares traded above $40. With 34 patents on its K-Cup design expiring this September, competition for the single serve category will be even more fierce.
Related articles:
"Green Mountain is a costly cup of coffee," Businessweek, 2/28-3/6/2011, pp. 44-45
Showing posts with label competitive advantage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label competitive advantage. Show all posts
Buy American
A predecessor of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, commonly referred to as "the Stimulus" or the "Recovery Act") is the Buy American Act which was passed in 1933 by Congress and signed into law by President Roosevelt. It was intended for the US government to prefer US-made products in its purchases and that preference could be waived if foreign-made products were cheaper.
While the US is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, at least in 2010, with $1.7 trillion in manufacturing value compared with China's $1.3 trillion, that gap is closing quickly. Quite a lot of products are still made here, though largely durable goods such as household appliances, vehicles, electronic components, industrial machined parts, as well as goods that are too costly to produce overseas and ship back to the US for domestic consumption like pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and cosmetics. Probably one of the more challenging things to find in the US is a gift for hosts when visiting China.
A word of caution that not everything sold at a "buy local" branded retail store (e.g., Made in Oregon) has locally made goods in it.
Read more?
"Buy American is Un-American" by Harry Binswanger, Ph.D.
Do Robots Take People's Jobs?
While the US is still the largest manufacturing economy in the world, at least in 2010, with $1.7 trillion in manufacturing value compared with China's $1.3 trillion, that gap is closing quickly. Quite a lot of products are still made here, though largely durable goods such as household appliances, vehicles, electronic components, industrial machined parts, as well as goods that are too costly to produce overseas and ship back to the US for domestic consumption like pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and cosmetics. Probably one of the more challenging things to find in the US is a gift for hosts when visiting China.
A word of caution that not everything sold at a "buy local" branded retail store (e.g., Made in Oregon) has locally made goods in it.
Read more?
"Buy American is Un-American" by Harry Binswanger, Ph.D.
Do Robots Take People's Jobs?
Occupy Amazon? LMAO...
Other retailers are just angry with Amazon because they didn't think of this idea sooner. Instead of wasting valuable holiday retail time being angry with Amazon, maybe the other retail bookstores should spend the resources to develop their own inbound marketing funnels. Physical storefront owners are just perturbed that customers enjoy the tactile experience of shopping even though many will ultimately make their purchase online.
There would have to be a significant break in price or some other incentive (e.g., free shipping, bundled products/services) that would steer a customer away from that purchase. A $5 perk is insignificant if the item purchased retails for less than $25 since 3rd party shipping costs via Amazon would most certainly gobble up that benefit. This begs the question of how steep of a discount would be enough to lure a customer who is already at a physical retail store location to change their mind and shop elsewhere if the product were in stock.
Amazon.com is not the only online purveyor of goods with comparison shopping features for its customers. Many big box retailers have in-store product location websites which on-site employees can access via store terminals to find in-stock merchandise by nearby store location: Home Depot, Barnes and Nobles, Wal-Mart, JcPenney, etc.
What is lacking here is awareness that customers do shop this way. Having a cozy atmosphere and sweet aromas piping in from a coffee kiosk is not going to pay the overhead costs, let alone the staff wages of a brick and mortar store. Brick and mortar bookstore owners can compete with a powerhouse like Amazon by closing the information gap that forces customers to seek outside sources for reviews, purchase validation, or price comparisons.
Frankly, I don't see my local Ace hardware store going out of business any time soon, even with several big box retailers (including a newly built Costco) located just a mile away on the same street. Maybe bookstores can learn something about local area marketing from this hardware store.
There would have to be a significant break in price or some other incentive (e.g., free shipping, bundled products/services) that would steer a customer away from that purchase. A $5 perk is insignificant if the item purchased retails for less than $25 since 3rd party shipping costs via Amazon would most certainly gobble up that benefit. This begs the question of how steep of a discount would be enough to lure a customer who is already at a physical retail store location to change their mind and shop elsewhere if the product were in stock.
Amazon.com is not the only online purveyor of goods with comparison shopping features for its customers. Many big box retailers have in-store product location websites which on-site employees can access via store terminals to find in-stock merchandise by nearby store location: Home Depot, Barnes and Nobles, Wal-Mart, JcPenney, etc.
What is lacking here is awareness that customers do shop this way. Having a cozy atmosphere and sweet aromas piping in from a coffee kiosk is not going to pay the overhead costs, let alone the staff wages of a brick and mortar store. Brick and mortar bookstore owners can compete with a powerhouse like Amazon by closing the information gap that forces customers to seek outside sources for reviews, purchase validation, or price comparisons.
Frankly, I don't see my local Ace hardware store going out of business any time soon, even with several big box retailers (including a newly built Costco) located just a mile away on the same street. Maybe bookstores can learn something about local area marketing from this hardware store.
Google's Hangout feature, a competitive advantage?
Google+'s hangout feature is one of the few aspects of Google's attempt at social media connectivity that sets it apart from and perhaps makes it better than other competitors. You might say that it is a competitive advantage when compared to other companies that offer similar or substitute products.
Let's see what's in this space already:
Let's see what's in this space already:
- Mainstream multi-person text conferencing: Any mainframe system, internet relay chat (IRC), instant messaging (IM)
- Single point audio/video conferencing (site-to-site, peer-to-single-source-to-peer, one-site-to-many): any IM app with a video chat component, XBOX, Cisco, etc.
- Shared immersion user environments: MMO (massive multiplayer online; typically refers to games), MUDs (multi-user dungeons)
- Each hangout generates a unique URL which can then be shared to invite others to a hangout; but, multiple hangouts that share the same circles of users cannot merge into a larger hangout.
- It's browser-based, so like MMORTS (massive multiplayer real time strategy games), there's no software client to download, drivers to update; except for maybe the browser plug-in that Google chat and video also runs on.
- It's also cloud-based, so having uptime, refresh rates, and latency issues like other multi-user environments are probably not an issue.
There's only one service that one-up's Hangout, and that is Second Life (and most other virtual 3-D audio/chat and motion animated worlds).
Is it sustainable? Depends on the total number of global users and who is going to pay for all that hosted bandwidth and live video streaming. Currently in the United States, the Internet is a shared cost system and everyone "pays" for it in some context.
Will it normalize the fee-based video conferencing costs for businesses? Probably not, especially if you want to v/c with more than 10 people.
Is it practical for mobile devices? At the moment, hangout doesn't support mobile devices. Though, if someone can create a video compression capability that can cache multiple streams of video content in a way that is cost-effective for the device user, then perhaps; but I don't think even commercially available technology is quite there yet.
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