Touching or imagining touch sensations leads to more sales
Want to Save Some Money? Shop Without Touching - TIME
To test this hypothesis, the authors added an extra layer to the experiment. After the students either touched or didn’t touch the Slinky and coffee mug, they asked about half of them to imagine picking up the products and bringing them home. They asked the other half to simply evaluate the products in their minds. Among those who touched the products, imagining ownership did not affect the price they’d be willing to pay for them. However, among those who didn’t touch the items — a group that shares the same hands-free experience as online shoppers — picturing ownership led to significantly higher valuations of the products.
City development, key to economic prosperity
But even better are the less read The Economy of Cities (1970) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), twin volumes which do nothing less than demolish and rebuild macroeconomics. Economics went wrong, she explains, with the work her titles allude to, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Nations aren’t the proper unit of macroeconomic analysis; cities are.Jacobs arrives at this conclusion by considering the stagflation of the 1970s– simultaneous high unemployment and high inflation, something that was not supposed to be possible under either left-wing (Keynesian) or right-wing (monetarist) economics. They were supposed to trade off. She points out that this condition– high prices and not enough work– is normal for backward regions; Western economists mistook the fitful but constant economic boom from Smith’s time on as a permanent condition.
Expertise is overrated
Op-Ed Columnist - Learning How to Think - NYTimes.com
One explanation is that so-called experts turn out to be, in many situations, a stunningly poor source of expertise. There’s evidence that what matters in making a sound forecast or decision isn’t so much knowledge or experience as good judgment — or, to be more precise, the way a person’s mind works.
AIG and how the US got here
The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone
The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).
Good business opportunity in public auctions
Cash-hungry U.S. states turn to Web to auction goods | Technology | Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. municipalities, strapped for cash as the recession decimates revenues, are stepping up sales of everything from old police cars, helicopters and bicycles to confiscated jewelry and slot machines in an effort to reduce swollen deficits.
The situation we are going towards reminds me a lot of the collapse of the USSR. There will be great opportunities ahead. In some countries bodies like the customs & excise (at international borders), port authority and the police also do interesting auctions of confiscated property.
Things are changing fast as more competition mean lower selling prices at the time that supply of goods for sale increases.
Perfect buyers’ market.
50% Of Americans 2 Paychecks Away From Having Big Financial Problems
Emergency Funds: 50% Of Americans 2 Paychecks Away From Having Big Financial Problemos
US News reports that half of Americans are two paychecks away from hardship.
They quote this from a recent MetLife study to highlight the problem:”Without a steady paycheck, 50% of Americans say they could not meet their financial obligations for more than a month - and, of that, a disturbing 28% couldn’t support themselves for more than two weeks of unemployment.”
Unveiling the “Sixth Sense,” game-changing wearable tech
Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense | Video on TED.com
Talks Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry: Unveiling the “Sixth Sense,” game-changing wearable tech
Money is debt documentary
What businesses did well in The Great Depression? | Trusted.MD Network
What businesses did well in The Great Depression? | Trusted.MD Network
According to statistics published some 20 years ago by Dr.Ravi Batra, the safest businesses and industries during the worst years of the Great Depression (1929-1933) were:Repair shops
Educational services (A lot of young men that couldn’t find work borrowed money to go to trade schools and college.)
Healthcare services
Bicycle shops
Bus transportation
Gasoline service stations
Second hand stores
Legal services
Drug or proprietary stores
The Crisis of Credit Visualized
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About Javier Marti
As an independent strategy consultant, futurist, speaker and founder of Trendirama.com Consulting, Javier is dedicated to help organizations, small businesses and individuals to optimize systems, increase profits and make better choices in business and in life. He is the author of the book "Mobile, Domains & The Future"
When not consulting for clients, Javier shares his knowledge and experience through information-packed, yet entertaining presentations in a wide range of subjects in English and Spanish.
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