How Merchants Will Fight Subscription Dodgers

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

Six Hacks To Escape Subscription Trap

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

Traditional Media Has Itself To Blame For Its Downfall

Millennials don’t read newspapers and magazines. That bodes ill for the future of traditional media. As though such threats caused by generational shifts are not lethal enough, traditional media is hurting itself even further with its lax attitude and casual behavior. Here are some ways by which traditional media is hurtling towards its downfall. Can’t … Read more

Don’t Ascribe To Generation What Can Be Explained By Age

Most statements about behavior of Millennials are true for all people when they were 25 years old, regardless of whether they really belong to the generation called Millennials (defined as born between 1995-2005) or some other generation like Gen X, Boomers or Gen Z. Let’s take one oft-quoted behavior: Millennials prefer renting to owning houses. … Read more

Britannia World Cup CEM – Low Budget Campaign Or Outright Scam?

Britannia recently ran a Customer Engagement Management campaign for its NICE biscuit. Like any typical CEM campaign, the BRITANNIA KHAO WORLD CUP JAO campaign required consumers to find a promo code on the product package and SMS it to a telephone number (92620 92620). But, from here on, the Britannia CEM campaign deviated significantly from … Read more

When Nothing Is Better Than Something – Part 2

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

When Nothing Is Better Than Something – Part 1

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