Waste or not have been a battle for a long while. Is luxury a waste?

Seth talked about two incidents of waste that he encountered in the hotel. And in one of the incident:

when I got home, the $125 watch I had ordered from Amazon was waiting for me. The box for the watch contained four pamphlets, a small velvet bag, a cleaning cloth and was more than 10 inches by 3 inches by 3 inches in size. It weighed well over a pound–just the presentation box, not the watch.

Years back then, I would suppose functionality of an item would be the most important factor that comes into consideration when making a purchase. But now, the whole idea is drifting away, moving towards the presentation than the item itself.

More companies looked into the areas of selling the benefits than selling features, and in fact using them as a factor in competition. Think about it, when you buy a car, are you looking just for the convenience or the luxury of having one?

We have lately been exposed to emotionally marketing. Japan is well known for its packaging. And the fact is that, I have ever tasted such a cookie that looks extremely great on the outside, but probably not up to my expectation for the taste.

And I remembered that I saw somewhere on the internet a photo featuring one of the credit card that was sent to their premium credit card holder, within a big metallic business case and the card stays within. I believed that if I were the one receiving such a card, no doubt, I may come to think of it as a bit of waste later on. But then, the moment that I received the card, I would have the emotional feeling of class and pride of owning such a card.

Do all these consider to be a luxury or just a wilful waste?

business strategy, marketing resources

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Saw this on Seth’s post, that the Google Docs spreadsheet new feature has innovated away from spreadsheet, and moreover, adopted the web idea, which helps to create a poll simply with spreadsheet. This was not a feature in most desktop bounded simple spreadsheet program.

But Google Docs made a breakthrough and set in to create this within their spreadsheet. However though, how useful could it be, is really up to individual, and their purposes.

Most business people talk about surveying or polling, with this feature it will simply give the business or organization a great pilot testing ground targeted to their specific target audience.

Other than that, Seth Godin triggered the idea of a simple event auction system with limited seating. As always innovation is not just creative, but fun as well. Like what Seth talked about, instead of having to charge a fixed price to ticket, what about changing the whole idea into categorized based signup, where it is based on the number, e.g. first 5 tickets at $1, the next five at $2, and $500 for the last ten, etc. In such a sense, it rewards early bird signup.

In fact, such has been seen on some online selling websites. However though, likewise to the various pricing models, this idea does also have its own pros and cons. It is greatly based on the demand and supply of the product or services. If the demand does not meet the supply, it would be hard for the pricing model to work well.

As for a geography-based pricing system, a tracker or locater, or some sort of tracking mechanisms, that could perfectly make this idea works. However, this could be a great idea to implement for services sold towards internet based audience.Another wild idea for airlines, flights for passengers instead of passengers for flights. Personally, I like this idea, simply because I always believed in the sense of demand before supply.

These may be crazy and wild ideas, but then with the revolution of innovation and interaction. And probably one of these days, there maybe someone who may be able to realize them, with fine tuning and perfection.

business resources, business strategy, marketing resources

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Mindmapping has been the topic for the last few posts, but just couldn’t stop me from posting this when I saw this library. Check it out over at Mappi, this is a great mind map library that contains more than 1000 mind maps. As I have stated in the previous post of Power of Mind Mapping, the technique and power of mindmapping is unlimited.

Be it for reference or for an idea, Mappi keeps a whole library of mindmaps created by others. That will aid in making a great reference when you need more ideas about mindmap creation.

As for the second part regarding this post, will be of course, my test drive for the online web 2.0 mindmapping tool called, Mindmeister, as introduced by one of my commenter in the previous post.

Free Mind – the downloadable open source mind mapping software, well known for its quick, clickable fold/unfold function.

MindMeister – online web 2.0 styled collaborative mind mapping with 3 plans, free basic, premium, and team.

bubbl.us – a free and simple application triggers brainstorming and ideas sharing online.

In additional, here are some mindmapping articles not to miss:

Articles from iMindMap :

Creating Your First Mind Map

Ultimate Thinking Tool

Problem Solving with Tony Buzan

Innovation Tools :

10 Mistakes To Avoid With Mind Mapping Software

business resources, self improvement

Popularity: 57% [?]

Mindmapping has been mistaken as something that is only great for businesses and organizations in their planning and organization of ideas and thoughts, to make up a rough planning to cater to companies’ development.

However though, this isn’t exactly true. Anyone and everyone could use it, not pratically just for businesses, but for personal life as well.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s an online sample of a mindmap that was created for a shopping list.

Image Credit: Mappio Library

Besides having to create shopping list mindmap, here are other ideas for the use of mindmaps, such as:

• Wedding Planning
• Career Planning
• Health Goals Planning
• Travel Trip Planning
• Daily Planning, etc

Here’s a small video that will show you more about mindmapping with tools, instead of having to manually draw it out. Read the rest of this entry »

business resources, self improvement

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Based on the last post on Ouch! Competition Hurts! Competitiors Please Get Lost! and The Secret Recipe of Competitors and Competitions, where we talked about the stall owner’s little story regarding his neighbours do not welcome competition. In my opinion, competition doesn’t come from the stall owner, instead from themselves.

Having been through selling their products for the past one year without much competition, would pretty much kept them in the state of comfort, or otherwise known as the comfort zone. Breakaway from the comfort zone ain’t easy. It is only if the parties are willing and prepare to move themselves forward.

Lately, a systematic approach for making the competition irrelevant has surfaced. It is known as the Blue Ocean Strategy. This strategy is a result that came from more than 30 industries over a century between 1880 to 2000. The study comprises of 150 strategic moves through a decade long of study. Here’s a little read about the red and blue oceans…

Read the rest of this entry »

business strategy, marketing resources

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In the last post, Ouch! Competition Hurts! Competitiors Please Get Lost!, we have gone through the stall owner’s comeback story. Here are some inspirations from the previous post, and we’ll be cutting right down into the way he makes things work.

Does competition hurt?

The ideas or rather the inspirations through this incident that I have drawn upon are as follow:

• Why are people so afraid of competition?
• Does having competition mean bad, evil?
• Is there any way to counteract competition?

Read the rest of this entry »

business resources, my reviews

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Lately, I remembered going somewhere in my neighbourhood to have my lunch, and it seemed like the stall that had closed down for a year, is back in town! I loved dropping by that stall because of their famous fried fish, tasty and nice. And the fish by itself is a few times more bigger than the neighbouring stalls.

After I had my meal, the stall owner approached me with a question, how do you find the food? And we engaged in a conversation from there. And out of curiosity, I asked the stall owner the reason being for his “disappearing act” previously.

So he told me the story regarding how he requested the landlord to reduce the rental fee by a few hundred bucks, because it’s hard for the stall to survive under high rental, when especially the prices for ingredients increased as well. But the landlord declined. So left with no choice, the stall owner moved out of the place, and hence the disappearing act took place. But the story didn’t end here.

The landlord tried to rent out the place, however none of the succeeding stall owners were able to do well. Eventually, the landlord had no choice but to invite the previous stall owner and agreed to give him a reduced special offer. He took up the offer, and that’s the story of the comeback.

However he reflected that most of the nearby stalls are not welcoming him, simply because they see him as a great competitor, whom is going to steal their businesses with his return. He brags about the fact that his food are tasty and he charges at a competitive rate. And most importantly, the people living in that neighbourhood love his food. Now that’s the end of the story but not my conclusion … see you in the next post.

business resources, marketing resources, my reviews

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