Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
On the one hand, there are people who think credit card is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. On the other hand, there are people who think credit card is a weapon of mass financial destruction. Maximalists put as many of their spends on credit card as possible. Haters shun credit card like the … Read more
I’ve visited several IKEA stores outside India during the past 20+ years. While I haven’t been able to visit the furniture retailer’s first Indian store that opened in Hyderabad four years ago, I got a chance to visit its new store in Mumbai recently. This store is as big as any of the other IKEA … Read more
Many product and service providers entrap consumers in subscriptions that they no longer need or want. The Rogue’s Gallery of shady merchants includes some of the largest and most valuable companies on the planet, as we saw in What Is Subscription Trap?. Uber fines Rider even when Driver cancels. Few Riders jump thru' the hoops … Read more
We saw many best practices to escape Subscription Trap in Six Hacks To Escape Subscription Trap. At the end of the post, we noted that none of them is guaranteed to work in 100% of the cases. Well, then, what is? Some people have told me that you can contact your bank to reverse unwanted subscription … Read more
In What Is Subscription Trap?, we saw several Dark Patterns used by brands and service providers (“Merchants”) to make it difficult for us to cancel subscriptions like Social network e.g. LinkedIn Premium Digital media e.g. Wall Street Journal Streaming video service / OTT e.g. Netflix Hosting service e.g. Hostgator SAAS software e.g. Salesforce In this … Read more
All of us are familiar with the following subscriptions: Social network e.g. LinkedIn Premium Digital media e.g. Wall Street Journal Streaming video / OTT e.g. Netflix Hosting service e.g. Hostgator SAAS software e.g. Salesforce A subscription is for a given plan at a fixed monthly fee. When you sign up for it, you typically submit … Read more
In continuation of Part 1, here are three more situations in which the old adage, “something is better than nothing” is critically flawed. #3. DARK STORE INVENTORY The way ecommerce works, you place an order on the website of an ecommerce company (e.g. Amazon) and the company ships the ordered good(s) from a central warehouse. … Read more
According to the old adage, “something is better than nothing”. This has become common wisdom because it’s often true. But there are a few critical situations where it’s fatally flawed. In this post, I’ll give a few examples. #1. CACHE MEMORY Back in the day, the IT hardware company I worked for launched two models … Read more
At the end of my blog post titled Retail Is Still Barking Up The Wrong Tree Against Ecommerce, I’d made a bold prediction that, within a few months, I’d find a few more non-price related reasons for shopping online. Well, it took me longer than that but I found one recently. This was at the outlet … Read more
Over the years I’ve bought a wide range of products and services from banks, insurers, etailers, colleges, publishers, brick-and-mortar stores, hardware and software companies, TELCOs, airlines and travel agencies. My experience as a customer ranges from delight (Ecommerce and Travel) through to exasperation (Higher Education, Media, and Retail) and indifference (BFSI, Technology and Telecom). Poor … Read more