The Future of Retail Isn't Direct-to-Consumer. How Brands Are Embracing Stores in 2023.

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The Future of Retail Isn't Direct-to-Consumer. How Brands Are Embracing Stores in 2023. Since the peak of the pandemic, customers have returned to in-store shopping in droves. Here's how brands are responding with brick and mortar strategies for 2023. Continued here

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Can We Talk About How Weird Baby Mammals Are? Kangaroos with giant arms. Bats with clown feet. Sometimes, young animals’ proportions are shockingly different from their parents’. As adults, bats—the only mammals in the world capable of bona fide flight—are all about their wings. The trademark appendages can span up to 66 inches; they help bats snag insects, climb trees, attract mates, even fan their bodies in the summer heat. But as babies, bats are all about their giant clown feet. Continued here

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Suddenly, California Has Too Much Water In the Talmudic parable of Honi the Circle Maker, the drought-stricken people of Jerusalem send up a prayer that God should deliver them rain. And sure enough, after a few false starts, he does. Except that once the rain starts, it won’t let up. It pours and pours until the people are forced to flee to higher ground, their homes flooded by the answer to their prayer. That, minus the whole divine-intervention part, is roughly the situation that California currently finds itself in. After years of virtually unremitting drought, the state is now suddenly, tragically, swamped with an overabundance of water. Over the past couple of weeks, a series of intense storms has caused massive, widespread flooding. On Sunday evening, the president declared a state of emergency, and by the next day, more than 90 percent of the state’s residents were under flood watch. At least 17 people have died—that number is likely to rise—and tens of thousands more have been forced to evacuate. When the storms finally subside, the cost of the damage is expected to exceed $1 billion. But we still have a ways to go: Weather forecasters expect the heavy rain to continue for at least another week, along with lightning and hail. Tornadoes are not out of the question. Continued here

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Business Marketing: Understand What Customers Value How do you define the value of your market offering? Can you measure it? Few suppliers in business markets are able to answer those questions, and yet the ability to pinpoint the value of a product or service for one’s customers has never been more important. By creating and using what the authors call customer value models, suppliers are able to figure out exactly what their offerings are worth to customers. Continued here

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Neuromarketing: What You Need to Know The field of neuromarketing, sometimes known as consumer neuroscience, studies the brain to predict and potentially even manipulate consumer behavior and decision making. Over the past five years several groundbreaking studies have demonstrated its potential to create value for marketers. But those interested in using its tools must still determine whether that’s worth the investment and how to do it well. Continued here

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Creativity in Advertising: When It Works and When It Doesn't Do highly creative ads really inspire people to buy products? Studies have found that creative messages get more attention and lead to positive attitudes about the products, but there’s little evidence linking those messages to purchase behavior. To address this gap, Reinartz and Saffert developed a consumer survey approach that measures perceived creativity along five dimensions—originality, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis, and artistic value—and applied the approach in a study of 437 TV ad campaigns for 90 fast-moving consumer goods brands in Germany. The study then linked the assessments to sales figures for the products. Continued here

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10 Truths About Marketing After the Pandemic The Covid-19 pandemic upended a marketer’s playbook, challenging the existing rules about customer relationships and building brands. One year in, there’s no going back to the old normal. Here are 10 new marketing truths that reveal the confluence of strategies, operations, and technologies required to drive growth in a post-Covid-19 world. Continued here

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How to Market in a Downturn Because no two recessions are exactly alike, marketers find themselves in poorly charted waters every time one occurs. But guidance is available, say Quelch and Jocz, who have studied marketing successes (by Smucker, Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch, and others) as well as failures throughout past recessions and identified patterns in consumer and company behavior that strongly affect performance. Understanding consumers’ changing psychology and habits, the authors argue, will enable firms to hone their strategies so they can both survive the current downturn and prosper afterward. Continued here

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How to Answer "Why Do You Want to Work Here?" Of all the interview questions job applicants prepare for, the most obvious ones sometimes get the least attention. Yes, you came ready to share your biggest flaw, your greatest strength, a moment when you shined, and a concept you learned, but what do you do with a broad but direct question like “Why do you want to work here?” In this piece, the author offers three strategies for answering this common interview question and provides sample answers for you to use as a guide. Continued here

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Branding in the Age of Social Media Marketers originally thought that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would let them bypass mainstream media and connect directly with customers. Hoping to attract huge audiences to their brands, they spent billions producing their own creative content. But consumers never showed up. In fact, social media seems to have made brands less significant. Continued here

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How to Strengthen Your Network When You're Just Starting Out New employees tend to make professional connections based on proximity (colleagues they see the most) or commonalities (the colleagues most like themselves). But that’s a mistake. When you network with colleagues like you or near you, you create an echo chamber which circulates only the same ideas about the same opportunities. That sameness benefits neither you nor your peers, especially when it comes to innovation and growth. Continued here

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How to Give a Killer Presentation According to Anderson, presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance—not style. In fact, it’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. So if your thinking is not there yet, he advises, decline that invitation to speak. Instead, keep working until you have an idea that’s worth sharing. Continued here

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The 30 Elements of Consumer Value: A Hierarchy What consumers truly value can be difficult to pin down and psychologically complicated. But universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance in existing markets or break into new markets. In the right combinations, the authors’ analysis shows, those elements will pay off in stronger customer loyalty, greater consumer willingness to try a particular brand, and sustained revenue growth. Continued here

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The IRS Delays a 1099-K Reporting Change-- Small Relief for Small Business Owners The IRS announced in December that it would delay the implementation of its reduced 1099-K reporting threshold. What that means. Continued here

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The Elusive Green Consumer Companies that introduce sustainable offerings face a frustrating paradox: Most consumers report positive attitudes toward eco-friendly products and services, but they often seem unwilling to follow through with their wallets. The authors have been studying how to encourage sustainable consumption for several years, performing their own experiments and reviewing research in marketing, economics, and psychology. Continued here

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The Meaning of Dry January That more and more people are abstaining from drinking for one month a year is a sign of society’s profoundly broken relationship with alcohol—and coming change. Edward Slingerland is a philosophy professor who wrote a book arguing that alcohol has helped humans create the world as we know it. But this January, he’ll be forgoing alcohol—at least for half of the month. Continued here

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What You Need to Know About Segmentation The marketers of Clearblue Advanced Pregnancy Test, a product that can tell you if you’re one-week, two-weeks, or three-plus weeks pregnant, asked a couple of D-list celebrities to tweet out their positive tests back in 2013. As Businessweek’s Jessica Grose reported, the maker of the test, Swiss Precision Diagnostics, has a 25% share of the at-home pregnancy-testing industry and is targeting its marketing efforts at Millennials. Grose quotes IbisWorld researcher Jocelyn Phillips as pointing to the high-tech aspects of Clearblue’s test, also noting that young women might be more willing to shell out more money for such technology — the digital version costs about $5 more than the boring old blue and pink line version. Continued here

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The Globalization of Markets Many companies have become disillusioned with sales in the international marketplace as old markets become saturated and new ones must be found. How can they customize products for the demands of new markets? Which items will consumers want? With wily international competitors breathing down their necks, many organizations think that the game just isn’t worth the effort. Continued here

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21 Great Deals on WFH Gear, Weighted Blankets, and Phones the post-holiday blues can make it tough to get back to your daily routine. But upgrading your gear can make jumping back into things slightly easier. Whether it’s a comfy desk chair for your work-from-home setup, a nimble robot vacuum to keep your house clean, or a pair of sleep earbuds for a restful night—we’ve found a number of great discounts on those gadgets and more.  Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here

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Know Your Customers' "Jobs to Be Done" Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create offerings that people truly want to buy, firms instead need to home in on the job the customer is trying to get done. Continued here

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38 Smart Questions to Ask in a Job Interview The opportunity to ask questions at the end of a job interview is one you don’t want to waste. It’s both a chance to continue to prove yourself and to find out whether a position is the right fit for you. In this piece, the author lists sample questions recommended by two career experts and divides them up by category: from how to learn more about your potential boss to how to learn more about a company’s culture. Choose the ones that are more relevant to you, your interests, and the specific job ahead of time. Then write them down — either on a piece of paper or on your phone — and glance at them right before your interview so that they’re fresh in your mind. And, of course, be mindful of the interviewer’s time. If you were scheduled to talk for an hour and they turn to you with five minutes left, choose two or three questions that are most important to you. You will always have more time to ask questions once you have the job offer in hand. Continued here

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In the Next Pandemic, Let's Pay People to Get Vaccinated It's a truth universally acknowledged that people like money. If you show them the cash, they're generally more likely to do what you want, whether that be to stop smoking, work out, or keep up with their medication.   As vaccines started to roll out of labs during the pandemic, governments began wondering: How can we encourage as many people as possible to get vaccinated against Covid-19? Countries tried a mishmash of approaches: They rolled out rigorous public health messaging, engaged with hard-to-reach communities, got celebrities to plug the vaccines, and made them compulsory.  Continued here

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Emotional Intelligence and Your Team: the Hidden Danger Being introspective about your emotional health and well-being can be difficult for many leaders. Continued here

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A Refresher on A/B Testing A/B testing is a way to compare two versions of something to figure out which performs better. While it’s most often associated with websites and apps, the method is almost 100 years old and it’s one of the simplest forms of a randomized controlled experiment. This testing method has risen in popularity over the last couple of decades as companies have realized that the online environment is well-suited to help managers, especially marketers, answer questions like, “What is most likely to make people click? Or buy our product? Or register with our site?”. It’s now used to evaluate everything from website design to online offers to headlines to product descriptions. The test works by showing two sets of users (assigned at random when they visit the site) different versions of a product or site and then determining which influenced your success metric the most. While it’s an often-used method, there are several mistakes that managers make when doing A/B testing: reacting to early data without letting the test run its full course; looking at too many metrics instead of focusing on the ones they most care about; and not doing enough retesting to be sure they didn’t get false positive results. Continued here

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How to Write a Successful Best Workplaces Application Do you have what it takes to make our annual Best Workplaces list? Here are four tips for creating a strong application. Continued here

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The FAA Outage Lays Bare an Essential System Everyone Hates The United States Federal Aviation Administration today halted flights taking off across the country beginning early this morning and continuing until 9 am ET. The pause—the first of its kind in the US since the September 11, 2001 attacks—delayed thousands of flights and created a cascade of further delays and cancellations throughout the day. Those familiar with the FAA’s systems say the outage is unprecedented, but caps off years of frustration as the agency works to transition its complex processes to the cloud. The situation was caused by an outage in a critical system the FAA uses to distribute real-time data and warnings to pilots. Known as NOTAM (Notice to Air Mission) alerts, the system is vital for information sharing and coordinating many of the basic logistics of safe flying.  Continued here

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Exploit the Product Life Cycle Most alert and thoughtful senior marketing executives are by now familiar with the concept of the product life cycle. Even a handful of uniquely cosmopolitan and up-to-date corporate presidents have familiarized themselves with this tantalizing concept. Yet a recent survey I took of such executives found none who used the concept in any strategic way whatever, and pitifully few who used it in any kind of tactical way. It has remained—as have so many fascinating theories in economics, physics, and sex—a remarkably durable but almost totally unemployed and seemingly unemployable piece of professional baggage whose presence in the rhetoric of professional discussions adds a much coveted but apparently unattainable legitimacy to the idea that marketing management is somehow a profession. There is, furthermore, a persistent feeling that the life cycle concept adds luster and believability to the insistent claim in certain circles that marketing is close to being some sort of science.1 Continued here

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Understanding Leadership The would-be analyst of leadership usually studies popularity, power, showmanship, or wisdom in long-range planning. But none of these qualities is the essence of leadership. Leadership is the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants—a human and social achievement that stems from the leader’s understanding of his or her fellow workers and the relationship of their individual goals to the group’s aim. Continued here

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Welcome to the Experience Economy How do economies change? The entire history of economic progress can be recapitulated in the four-stage evolution of the birthday cake. As a vestige of the agrarian economy, mothers made birthday cakes from scratch, mixing farm commodities (flour, sugar, butter, and eggs) that together cost mere dimes. As the goods-based industrial economy advanced, moms paid a dollar or two to Betty Crocker for premixed ingredients. Later, when the service economy took hold, busy parents ordered cakes from the bakery or grocery store, which, at $10 or $15, cost ten times as much as the packaged ingredients. Now, in the time-starved 1990s, parents neither make the birthday cake nor even throw the party. Instead, they spend $100 or more to “outsource” the entire event to Chuck E. Cheese’s, the Discovery Zone, the Mining Company, or some other business that stages a memorable event for the kids—and often throws in the cake for free. Welcome to the emerging experience economy. Continued here

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5 Retail Trends to Follow in 2023 While there is no certainty in retail, it's vital to know what to expect this year. Continued here

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Entrepreneurship: A Working Definition What is entrepreneurship? You probably think that the answer is obvious, and that only an academic would bother to ask this question. As a professor, I suppose I am guilty of mincing words. But like the terms “strategy” and “business model,” the word “entrepreneurship” is elastic. For some, it refers to venture capital-backed startups and their kin; for others, to any small business. For some, “corporate entrepreneurship” is a rallying cry; for others, an oxymoron. Continued here S32 How to Write a Thank You Email After an Interview You’ve updated your resume, written your cover letter, and prepared for your interview. Now it’s time for your thank you note to seal the deal. In this piece, the author outlines what to say — and not to say — in your thank you email to interviewers and answers common questions like: How much detail should you include? When should you send it? And why is it important to do? He also includes three sample emails to use as a guide. Continued here S38 Are You a Difficult Person to Work For? You’re a new manager with fantastic technical skills, a passion for high-quality work, and the desire to expand your impact at the company. You’ve always been good at whatever you put your mind to. But now, for the first time, you’ve gotten some devastating feedback from HR, from a direct report, or from your own manager: You’re hard to please and difficult to work for. Continued here S45 5 Reasons Why You Should Not Lay Off Your Team and 2 Reasons Why You Should Laying off employees can create more problems than it solves. Continued here S56 Scientists See Quantum Interference between Different Kinds of Particles for First Time A newly discovered interaction related to quantum entanglement between dissimilar particles opens a new window into the nuclei of atoms For the first time, scientists have observed quantum interference—a wavelike interaction between particles related to the weird quantum phenomenon of entanglement—occurring between two different kinds of particles. The discovery could help physicists understand what goes on inside an atomic nucleus. Continued here S61 A Police App Exposed Secret Details About Raids and Suspects Last September, law enforcement agents from five counties in Southern California coordinated an operation to investigate, raid, and arrest more than 600 suspected sex offenders. The mission, Operation Protect the Innocent, was one of the largest such raids in years, involving ​​over 64 agencies. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, it was coordinated using a free trial of an app called SweepWizard. The raid was hailed as a success by Chief Michael Moore of the LAPD at a press conference the following week. But there was a problem: Unbeknownst to police, SweepWizard had been leaking a trove of confidential details about the operation to the open internet.   Continued here S55 China's version of Starlink is government-backed -- and has global ambitions Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink is an enormous project, with over 3,000 satellites in orbit, beaming internet access to customers all over the world. But in recent months, a Chinese competitor has begun to emerge, backed by Beijing — and with ambitions spanning far beyond China’s borders. After years of stalled plans, China’s satellite internet vision finally became clear in 2021 when Bao Weimin, a director of the country’s main space industry contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), confirmed that efforts were being centralized under an entity known as “Guo Wang,” or national network. Continued here S67 The Consolidation-Disruption Index Is Alarming This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week. We should be living in a golden age of creativity in science and technology. We know more about the universe and ourselves than we did in any other period in history, and with easy access to superior research tools, our pace of discovery should be accelerating. But, as I wrote in the first edition of this newsletter, America is running out of new ideas. Continued here S40 My Employee Works Late Every Night, but I Think It's Her Fault Her work habits are to blame, not her workload. Continued here S57 Why California Is Being Deluged by Atmospheric Rivers California has been hit by repeated storms fueled by torrents of moisture called atmospheric rivers that will only intensify in a warming climate California is taking a beating from what the National Weather Service has called a “seemingly never ending parade” of strong storm systems, which started late last December and are still coming. Called atmospheric rivers, they are long, narrow currents of exceptionally wet air that shoot across the ocean, capable of dumping massive volumes of rain or snow on landfall. Although these storms deliver much of the West’s precipitation, they also cause most of the region’s flooding, with associated economic damages as high as $1 billion a year. Continued here S66 Why I Dread Saying My Own Name This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       Okay, here comes our waiter. I stare at the silverware. He clicks his pen. I’m always the last to order. Sometimes my mom tries to help me by tossing out what she thinks I want. Continued here S52 How mud boosts your immune system "Don't get dirty!" was once a constant family refrain, as parents despairingly watched their children spoil their best clothes. Whether they were running through farmers' fields, climbing trees or catching tadpoles, it was inevitable that children's whites would turn brown before the day was over. Today, many parents may secretly wish their children had the chance to pick up a bit of grime. With the rise of urbanism, and the allure of video games and social media, contact with nature is much rarer than in the past. For many, there is simply no opportunity to get muddy. Continued here S46 3 Ethical Concerns About AI-Generated Art Artificial intelligence may be the new wave but if used unethically, it can cause more harm than good. Continued here S49 Do Crypto Prices Actually Mean Anything? After each high-profile crypto meltdown, there have been renewed calls for greater oversight of the space. The idea here is that if we regulated crypto players like traditional financial institutions, they would start behaving like ones. But a regulatory framework that is purpose-built for the technology would not change the underlying incentives for reckless and fraudulent. For the crypto industry to have a positive impact on society, we need to first overhaul how it measures progress — and success. Continued here S58 I Think My Face Was Deepfaked Into a Chinese Camping Stove Ad While scrolling through Taobao, a Chinese marketplace owned by Alibaba, my friend came across an ad for a camping stove. It was like looking in a mirror—I saw my Puerto Rican mother’s long eyelashes and distinct jawline, my father’s prominent Austrian nose, and my abuela’s long hands.  “Is it Photoshop?”  “Was I hacked?” “Or perhaps one of my photo apps is to blame?” Continued here S60 The Best Accessories and Tech Essentials for Your Dog If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED AT WIRED, WE really love our dogs. We also love each other’s dogs, whether they’re adorable little nuggets in New York City apartments, pit mixes in the country, or loyal heelers that spend all day, every day, within 6 inches of my left foot. For the past few years, my colleagues and I have been trading tips, tricks, and gear. These are the best dog accessories we’ve bought or tested for our very, very good boys and girls. Continued here S47 A Strong and In-Sync Financial Partnership Helps Entrepreneurs Excel Embrace the turbulence to then fly above the clouds for a smoother journey. Continued here S30 15 Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer In some industries, a weak labor market has left candidates with fewer options and less leverage, and employers better positioned to dictate terms. Those who are unemployed, or whose current job seems shaky, have seen their bargaining power further reduced. But the complexity of the job market creates opportunities for people to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment. Negotiation matters most when there is a broad range of potential outcomes. Continued here S51 Setting Your B2B Sales Strategy in a Downturn Large companies (especially in the tech sector) are conducting layoffs and cutting costs. For sales teams selling to clients in cost-cutting mode, this requires new tactics. B2B sellers must recognize that a slow economy creates different kinds of opportunities: that buyers’ time horizons become shorter, their willingness to take the risk of working with a new vendor goes down, and their focus on core, profitable business units go up (making it harder to sell to experimental or peripheral businesses within a larger company). Sellers need to avoid a spread-the-peanut-butter approach and instead concentrate resources on the most promising opportunities. Continued here S59 Drug Shortages Aren't New. The Tripledemic Just Made You Look Parents of small children have faced a persistent problem this "tripledemic" winter: They've headed out to pharmacies and supermarkets, looking for cold drugs and fever reducers to counter Covid, flu and RSV, and discovered the shelves were bare. And it hasn't just been over-the-counter drugs in short supply: The antibiotic amoxicillin, used to treat strep throat and scarlet fever, is scarce in the US and the UK. What's been worse: Discovering this isn't a one-time interruption that might resolve quickly—with luck, while your child could still benefit. According to records at the US Food and Drug Administration, amoxicillin supplies have been low since the end of October, and pharmacy experts say colleagues were struggling with stock-outs from the beginning of that month.  Continued here S54 The pollution causing harmful algal blooms It is the "smell of decay and death", says Beth Stauffer, from the University of Louisiana. "It has a physical presence. This layer of very striking greens and blueish greens…when you put your paddle in it, you can feel it." She's describing the harmful algal blooms (HABs) that used to be more associated with marine environments. But in recent years they've been moving further inland and affecting freshwater systems, too. And scientists such as Stauffer are trying to find out why. Continued here S62 The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing Animal testing has long been necessary for a drug to gain approval by the US Food and Drug Administration—but it may be on its way out. A new law seeks to replace some lab animal use with high-tech alternatives. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, signed by President Biden at the end of December with widespread bipartisan support, ends a 1938 federal mandate that experimental drugs must be tested on animals before they are used in human clinical trials. While the law doesn’t ban animal testing, it allows drugmakers to use other methods, such as microfluidic chips and miniature tissue models, which use human cells to mimic certain organ functions and structures. Continued here S53 The covert winter wave of Covid-19 In late October 2022, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts around the world began to notice an unsettling trend. As the epidemiologist Adam Kucharski explained in a Twitter thread, there was a new wave of Covid-19 afoot – but it was going largely unnoticed. Today the alarming spikes of Covid-19 deaths and hospitalisations, which we had all become familiar with during the grim days of 2020 and 2021, have been replaced by a more insidious, but unrelenting succession of daily fatalities. Continued here S35 The Psychology Behind Why We Love (or Hate) Horror At the same time, fear is not exactly a positive emotion. Lying in bed and binging on It and It Chapter Two, trembling as the darkness pushes in around us — this is not a feeling we would describe as pleasant. Then, what is it about horror that humans are so drawn to? Moreover, why are some of us willing to spend our hard-earned money on a scare while others go great lengths to avoid it? Continued here S48 Tips for Building Employee Engagement When Remote Work Is Not an Option Collaboration, connection, and community help in-house employees thrive. Continued here S50 Research: Why Leaders Should Be Open About Their Flaws Leaders often struggle to come across as authentic. New research finds that one reason is they frequently choose to present their strengths and intentionally avoid disclosing their weaknesses. A team of researchers asked leaders in various organizations to write how they would introduce themselves to prospective workers. Most leaders only revealed their strengths. This is a mistake. Revealing personal foibles — as long as they are not serious personal shortcomings — makes leaders come across as authentic and generates good will and trust. Continued here S36 5 Relationships You Need to Build a Successful Career In the initial stages of your career, one of the most important things you can do is build relationships that will have a significant impact on your life over time. These five relationships can accelerate your path to a promotion, increase your visibility within an organization, and stretch you beyond your comfort zone into to the leader you aspire to be. Continued here Contributors Dharmendra Kumar Priya Ranjan Powered by Blogger.