Forcing people to buy is a harsh term since no one has watched their family tremble at the end of a gun barrel while they were forced to make a purchase. Marketing, like everything else in this world, has changed as its aged. Many of the tactics used thirty years ago are not legal today because they misrepresented the product they pushed. Thus leading people to think they were buying something they were not.
The majority of marketing only exposes our desires to purchase; it does not create those desires. A greenhouse of discontent has been fertilized by hungry corporations and advertising agencies over several years causing our desires to shift and bend. But they are still our desires and acted upon by us.
We buy to identify ourselves with the identity of a brand. As Roy Williams points out in his Monday Morning Memo (Williams, 2006), “Our favorite brands are usually an extension of our values, a physical expression of our beliefs. This is why millions of us pay slightly higher prices for Fair Trade coffee. It tastes exactly like the coffee sold by heartless corporations, but Fair Trade coffee makes us feel differently.”
This could wander into the debate of whether marketing determines wants, or whether our wants determine marketing. However, staying on point that marketing forces us to buy unwanted or unneeded things is to say we are mindless and do not have free will. While I find myself saying, “Wow. That gadget would be great to have.” I also find myself too tight to buy it. Personality and buying habits learned as kids are probably a larger factor in people buying unwanted or unneeded items.
Marketing at its best simply causes us to either consciously realize a need or want and then provides us with the method of satisfaction. It helps one company’s product or service to be thought of above another’s. Marketing at its worst gives us a chuckle or makes us puzzle, but is gone with the next breath.
Works Cited
Williams, R. H. (2006, 12 04). Why We Buy. Retrieved 08 26, 2008, from The Monday Morning Memo: http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/?ShowMe=ThisMemo&MemoID=1651
The tire smoking, 100 mpg hybrid
November 26, 2007
Barrels of oil are dancing around the $100 mark and causing gas prices to dance to the same beat. Soon to follow will be groceries and anything else that travels on wheels. Gas-electric hybrids are becoming a common site on the road, but only for those who with one passenger or a small suitcase. They boast 60 miles to the gallon and take off speeds that make “blue hairs” honk their horn and shake a finger as they pass. Now think about a Hummer hybrid that has the same mileage and will put an “off the lot” Mustang to shame in the quarter mile. It’s happening, but not with gas.
As Fast Company author Clive Thompson featured in his cover story this month, Johnathan Goodwin is making it happen. Goodwin is removing the gasoline engine and replacing it with a diesel engine that he makes minor conversions too. His conversions to the GM Duramax engines are minor, but the results are not. With Goodwin’s least expensive conversion package, “a $5,000 bolt-on kit,” an immediate boost of twice the mileage and one fifth the emissions are attainable. Not to mention it often doubles the horsepower.
While Goodwin likes to play in the land of huge SUVs, taking this technology to the standard size SUV, crossover, or sedan is where the mileage and economy start to significantly benefit. Goodwin recently began conversion on Neil Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental to a diesel-electric hybrid (HARDIGREE). The car is expected to get 100 miles to the gallon. Not bad for a 19 foot car that weighs around two and half tons(Callebs). Young is even making a movie about the car’s conversion and his cross country tour that is planned after the conversion is complete.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked Johnathan to convert his Jeep Grand Wagoneer as well. Of course neither of these men has to worry about the return on investment. When spending between $28,000 (Thompson) and $40,000 (Callebs) to remove a gas engine, drop in a new diesel, and then convert it for fuel economy and emissions, the normal gas burning car owner holds a brief wish to have thirty to forty grand lying around. Quickly they realize they still would spend an extra forty on something else, and dismiss the idea as something cool, but not real. However, for those who already have a diesel, and wish to capitalize on that fact, you can by the $5,000 conversion package and go the “do it yourself” route. Goodwin’s company, SAE Energy, does have other products available now or soon to be. In this line up will be a download for a car’s computer chip to increase fuel economy another five to seven miles per gallon without affecting performance (Callebs), for around $200 this would be a good investment for almost any vehicle.
Johnathan also has some ideas (Thompson) about how all this can relieve us of dependency on Middle Eastern oil, and ease the price of fuel in the U.S. His three step process, as outlined in Fast Company, consist of one simple and major step. “…for Detroit to aggressively roll out diesel engines, much as Europe has already begun to do.” This in a “single stroke” (pun not lost on this reader) “would improve the nation’s mileage by as much as 40%, and because diesel fuel is already widely available, drivers could take that step with a minimum of disruption. What’s more, given that many diesel engines can also run homegrown biodiesel, a mass conversion to diesel would help kick-start that market.”(Thompson)
Thompson goes on to show the economic impact by stating that “The Department of Transportation estimated in 2004 that if we converted merely one-third of America’s passenger cars and light weight trucks to diesel, we’d reduce our oil consumption by up to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day- precisely the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.”
Some manufactures are moving on their own toward better diesel engines. Mercedes Benz has recently come out with diesel technology that is getting both better mileage and lower emissions. However, U.S. companies are slow to the starting line. GM finally took notice and has announced the Hummer line will include bio-diesel options by 2010 (Thompson). Now, if U.S. automakers will just bring these options to vehicles that you see more commonly on the streets an actual drop in foreign oil dependence might occur. Mercedes Benz has the BlueTec diesels with 37 miles to the gallon and will go from zero to sixty in 6.6 seconds (Thompson).
Another of Goodwin’s strong points is the ability of his conversions to run on grease from fried foods. There are already people in Springfield, Missouri running their vehicles on grease from fast food restaurants. With web sites like GoldenFuelSystems.com nearly anyone can convert a diesel engine to burn grease as well as diesel. And with rising gas prices the fry oil you can buy at Sam’s Club for $3.00 per gallon is starting to look like a good alternative.
The other two points of Goodwin’s gasoline weaning plan (Thompson) are to produce diesel-electric hybrid cars, and then to take that one step further and produce hybrids that burn bio-diesel “with hydrogen, ethanol, natural gas, or propane.” Which cuts the emissions up to 95% and doubles the horsepower (Thompson).
With articles like the one in Fast Company and other big name periodicals to follow, this technology is going to garner more attention from the masses. Maybe the public demand for such vehicles will drive production prices down and help bring more of these onto the road. Perhaps we’ll be filling our Natural Gas tanks at home, and our diesel tanks at the corner station. This would not require major infrastructure changes to our fueling grid. It would obviously increase our use of Natural Gas, but it is in plentiful supply from our own soil.
Something the article in Fast Company does not mention is the life of a diesel engine is more than double that of a gas powered engine. Requiring less maintenance and fewer repairs diesel engines keep on providing more reasons to switch from gasoline.
1. Would you consider purchasing a diesel engine on your next vehicle purchase if it was an option?
2. If so, would you consider running a separate tank with vegetable oil and/or a tank with natural gas, hydrogen, or propane?
3. Do you, or do you know anyone that drives a diesel powered passenger vehicle? If so, how old is the engine?
Works Cited
Callebs, Sean. Gas guzzlers get new lives — as tire-smoking hybrids. 20 11 2007. 24 11 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/20/green.hummers/index.html.
HARDIGREE, MATT. Neil Young to Convert Classic Lincoln to Bio-Diesel Hybrid. 20 11 2007. 24 11 2007 http://jalopnik.com/cars/celebrities/neil-young-to-convert-classic-lincoln-to-bio+diesel-hybrid-325009.php.
Irwin, Lindsey. “Biofuel-Powered by Design.” 07 2007. Biodiesel Magazine. 24 11 2007 http://biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=1710&q=Goodwin&category_id=25.
KSN News. Rock legend makes automotive history in Wichita. 14 11 2007. 24 11 2007 http://www.ksn.com/news/local/11320116.html.
SAE Energy. SAE Energy. 24 11 2007 http://www.saeenergy.com/.
Thompson, Clive. “Motorhead Messiah.” Fast Company 11 2007: 74-83 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah.html.
Research Post: Homeshoring
September 26, 2007
I only hit snooze once, then I make myself get out of bed and start the day. The clock says 5:30, but it feels more like 3:30. Guess I should have gone to bed earlier. After doing the necessaries I find clean running clothes and hit the pavement. Forty-five minutes later I’m back in to do some core exercise and stretching. Then I start the coffee and hit the shower. By seven I’ve got breakfast in the bowls and vitamins on the table. Fifteen minutes later the kids are all up and trying to pull themselves up to the table and making sounds similar to a Lawnboy failing to start.
After getting the boys off to school the youngest and I make our way to the office. Around 9:00 I settle into my office chair and begin using my email machete. Just under the garden window in my basement sits my desk. Ten feet over sits my daughter’s pink and purple kitchen set, along with a good assortment of movies and other toys. My dog likes to lie just on the other side of my desk so she can keep an eye on both of us while laying prone and napping. I’m one of 15 million estimated telecommuters. (CICHOWSKI)
My commute consists of going from my kitchen down to the basement. My coworkers contact me through phone, email, instant messaging, and video messaging. While I do enjoy lots of perks, it does take discipline and consistent scheduling of tasks. My company also gains some great benefits, but with these benefits comes some special considerations and planning.
Corporations are looking to telecommuting, or homeshoring, mostly as an alternative to offshoring customer service centers and to keep cost down when compared to brick and mortar phone service centers. Costs are lowered by not having to build a building to house the workers. Heating, cooling, lighting, furnishing, and maintaining that same space is gone as well. With many companies they are able to hire part time workers to fill their positions and then adjust staffing on the fly as the work load increases or decreases. Most workers are willing to follow this flexible work patterns and changing schedules because they are generally more content. This leads to lower turnover among the telecommuters and thus lowers cost of training for the employers. (Simonds)
Employees who telecommute also like the lower costs. With rising gas prices, commuting to work creates an increasing cost to working outside of the home that exceeds standard of living increases. Flexible schedules allow those who are involved with family to schedule around those school and extracurricular events. These workers are more content, as mentioned earlier, also because they are able to work in their preferred environment as opposed to a cubical or small office. (Bailor) Who needs casual Friday when many work in pajamas, and even those that don’t still work in casual comfortable clothes?
There are some special requirements to support this emerging workforce that traditional in office workers don’t need. Technologically speaking the company must have some preliminary policies and guidelines in place. They must consider the employee’s role in the company. Will they be on the phone mostly, or more technology development, or employee support? Forms of communication must be standardized based on specific scenarios regarding flow, origin, and destination of the communication. Policies must be developed and in place to decide what the company will pay for and maintain, and what the employee is expected to pay for and maintain. Examples include broadband, extra phone lines, computers, types of phones, modems and routers, and security. Based on these policies other standardizations must be made regarding what software and hardware will be used, how often it will be maintained and replaced, and if other activities will be allowed related to the employee’s personal life. (Simonds)
Depending on how much oversight you have for your employees there must be varying degrees of software used to monitor their activities and current working status. Also, software used for training and evaluating should be in place to help each employee set goals and improve. Hardware may be involved in the monitoring needs as well, especially for customer service work when using voice communications. Hardware for securing the data transmissions must be used to protect both the company and the customers. Firewalls or VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are the most common solution to security. (Gaudin)These are often determined by company policy related to who is responsible for purchasing and maintaining the hardware and software. Along with the computer needs phone requirements must be established. Whether using traditional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems must be able to support employees from several locations, transferring and routing calls to terminals outside the main office. (If there even is a main office.) (Bailor)
Educating employees through both online training and face to face training seems to be the best business practice among the larger firms supporting remote workers. Some requiring on-campus training as often as every three months, others offer strictly online training or support. (Bailor)
This new workforce must possess certain skills that aren’t always needed in the traditional work place. Most importantly, these employees must be have a foundation of technical knowledge and be able to do troubleshooting independently before requiring assistance from the help desk. These workers must also be able to separate themselves physically and mentally from the sirens of home life. (Bailor) Distractions are a plenty when at home, and those who cannot remove themselves will struggle in the work from home position. Often these two main skills are held by the work-from-home-force because employers are taping a college educated group that is willing to forego the higher pay for the flexibility of schedule, lack of commute, and non-required work attire. (Gaudin)
There are social benefits to this emerging work style as well. Employers are engaging a group that wants to work, but wants more to be at home or must be at home. This group’s reasons for wanting to work from home range from parents of school age children who need the extra income, to those who are physically disabled and find the traditional commute and office building to be a difficult environment to accomplish what they need to begin work each day. Working at home also has benefits for employees who only want to work part time, but couldn’t afford to pay for the commute and then only work two to three hours. All of these factors help contribute to employees being able to be more involved with family, and allow those parents who have not worked for a period of time to re-enter the workforce gradually, even building a resume to move on to a different job later on.
The environmental benefits are obvious, but must be stated. Fewer cars are traveling on the road, especially during rush hours. Lastly, large inefficient office buildings are not being heated and cooled to provide space for these employees.
Works Cited
Bailor, Coreen. “Home Bodies.” CRM Magazine January 2007: http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6543
CICHOWSKI, JOHN. “Time to end commute and work from home.” 17 9 2007. North Jersey. 22 9 2007 http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MTk3MDU1JnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg==
Gaudin, Sharon. Telecommuting Takes Flight at JetBlue. 3 3 2006. 22 9 2007 http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3589071
Simonds, Lauren. Remote Possibilities: Creating a No-Office Workforce. 5 10 2006. 22 9 2007 http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.co…le.php/3636261
Research Post: Identity 2.0
September 11, 2007
Web 2.0 has become a big buzz phrase over the last couple of years. It comes from a play on the software versioning number system used to signify revision and releases to the public. Many people have adopted this to mean the web has been revised enough to have its second version now in production. Following this lead, many new technological and software advances are also being given second version nomenclature; among these is Identity 2.0
Before discussing Identity 2.0 I would like to define, to the best of my understanding, what “Identity” is. Dick Hardt (Hardt) expressed that Identity is:
Who you are
Where you are from in the past and present
Who you say you are
Who others say you are
This last point is the basis of reputation, because it is reported by others. The third point, who you say you are, is the credentials we provide about ourselves Reputation then, allows for repeated validation by outside sources.
Truly verified identity is presentation of proof issued by an authorizing agency. For example, a driver’s license, passport, or other government issued ID is proof of identity. This proof passes the trust of the person being identified on to the issuer of the ID making trust based significantly on their creditability. Traditionally we have relied upon Government agencies to provide the root proof of identification. Other forms of identity proof are based on these government root IDs. Allowing trust to ultimately flow back to the government agency who issued the root ID.
These root forms of identification proof are universally accepted and built upon by other institutions. Universities, businesses, and other government agencies take these root IDs and add relevant information to them to build our profile within their data stores and provide a secondary ID. Once a secondary ID is granted, both the root ID and the secondary ID can be utilized as proof of identity within the specific secondary system. To prove our identification, the requesting party validates our claim by matching our photo, if we are present, to our actual self. Often times, the requesting party simply accepts the possession of identification credentials as enough evidence that the sending person is honestly the person in the credentials.
The first version of online identity required submission of personal information to each individual website’s database. These submissions vary in consistency from filling in very little private information to divulging considerable private details. Usually this request is directly tied to the degree to which the requesting site needs to trust the user. If it is simply a way to provide access to more information about the user, then something as simple as an email account may be all that is requested. If, however, you are conducting business either by purchasing or selling online information requested could require verified proof of your bank account number. (Most often bank accounts are verified by small deposits being placed in your account and you reporting the amounts of these deposits back to the requester.) As Dion Hinchcliffe stated in his blog “when it really counts, there’s no generally accepted way to identify who a user really is without resorting to onerous methods that are either 1) rife with privacy problems or 2) too complex and time-consuming and also kill the level of participation.” (Hinchcliffe)
The most glaring problem with this form of identity is presentation of fraudulent or stolen information of the user and phishing on the side of the business or website. (Richards) Advances in the physical realm of identity has made physical attempts at passing fraudulent ID much harder to accomplish, but in the virtual world it’s almost a given that if you ask for more information from the user than they deem necessary you will be given false data. After the issue of false or stolen data, the next troublesome issue lies in what agency possesses the authority to grant root proof of identification? This wades into the dark and smelly world of politics and I am choosing not to venture there in this research.
Each site’s data is contained in silos that cannot be connected or intermingled. This is further complicated with the fact that many sites have different requirements for setting up profiles secured by usernames and passwords. Thus, one site may have your preferred username available, but their password requirements (or limitations) don’t allow you to use your preferred password. Suddenly you have two passwords to remember. This compounds quickly as you register for more sites, each one requiring its own unique profile information about you. The same problems often apply to Enterprise applications and programs used on local machines. Being able to use the same credentials at different web sites or to have one site communicate to another site your identification, preferences, and any other relevant information would be a benefit to most online users.
Many garage doors have a keypad outside the home to allow entry without a key or garage remote. Have you ever seen a house with a five digit number scribed into the concrete drive next to the garage? Or a house that had a clip board hanging from the fence w/ five large numbers scribbled on it facing the garage? You might have seen a cubby (don’t tell if it’s your own) with yellow stickies on the monitor, under the keyboard, or in the top drawer containing miscellaneous usernames and passwords penciled on them. (Richards) (Conry-Murray) The user centric design of online identity has caused this security lapse to be an acceptable practice in the work place. There are ways to avoid this, such as browsers that remember which username and passwords go with which sites. However, these do not always perform correctly and do not work at all on another computer. The chances that you will remember your username and password diminishes the longer these form fillers are relied on.
Identity 2.0 is an effort to bring a user centric based proof of ID to the online world as well as Enterprise applications. By allowing users to submit a single line of text as the login to validate, and for the first time visit create, the user has greatly increased the proficiency of online identification. (Conry-Murray) Some of the projects underway also allow the sharing of user approved information between sites or applications. Different projects accomplish this in different ways. Some of these ways will be discussed below. One of the major features among most of these projects is putting control in the user’s hands to decide which data is shared with each site, and allowing propagated updates to be pushed out anytime the user’s identification is updated on in their profile.
The three main ingredients needed for any of the projects being pursued in regard to Identity 2.0 is the web browser on the user’s computer, the requesting site, and the authorizing identity provider. (Conry-Murray) VeriSign, Microsoft, and other less recognized companies are issuing various forms of ID. The list of companies contributing and projects they are involved with has stabilized only in the last couple of months. There have been a few smaller endeavors that have either been consumed or died. We are going to look at the main five projects and the companies involved with each.
One of the oldest and probably most widely recognized is Microsoft’s Passport. While it no longer exists, it was the first attempt by large corporation to bring Single Sign On (SSO) to the web. Microsoft has completely rewritten Passport and re-launched it as Windows Live ID. The main feature again being SSO and it’s had a very low adoption rate by any corporations outside of Microsoft.
Microsoft has also brought out CardSpace (formally InfoCard) by imbedding it in Vista and making it available for XP. The difference in CardSpace is it manages your different Identification Cards on your local machine. You can create cards to use on different websites, or acquire a Managed Card by an authorizing identity provider (VeriSign being the most notable.) When visiting a supporting CardSpace site that requires you to login you can click the CardSpace icon and select which ID card you want to submit to the site allowing you to create a profile and login. It does not create the Identities or provide authority to validate them. This makes CardSpace a good companion technology to the rest of the projects we are going to look at. However, adoption of CardSpace is lagging in the high value associated sites. (Richards)
OpenID is probably the most discussed of the current projects among those familiar with this subject. It is being supported and used by many different corporations and websites. In the beginning it was mostly used to quickly validate who you were to leave blog comments. (Conry-Murray) As it’s been used as a base in other projects its use has broadened. OpenID establishes a URL that each user in essence owns and can post their profile information at this URL for other sites to access. This URL acts as the universal username and password to login to sites and applications with. The major drawback to this approach is anyone can create an OpenID without any form of validation. Many companies have approached this by implementing various ways of validating.
VeriSign has taken OpenID and created their Personal Identity Provider card that can be stored in CardSpace. This is currently in VeriSign’s labs and is free for use. (Consumer Identity and Profile Management) This approach works well for Enterprise use as a unique number can be given to each user for Card Creation along with email validation. Then the cards can be used to sign in to various applications or websites that support CardSpace. Efficiency for workers going from site to site, or application, is the biggest draw. Also, anytime the user updates their information in their CardSpace card it is automatically updated for the site. You may have multiple cards, and use more than one card to create multiple profiles in each site or application.
Sxip (pronounced Skip) is another company basing their product on OpenID. Skip takes the users URL and makes it available only through the user’s browser, so there are no direct requests to the URL server from web sites, and the degree of information passed through the browser to the sites is regulated on the fly by the user. (Sxip)
Higgins, Liberty Alliance, and Yadis are three other projects that are being developed by a long list of contributing companies. These projects consist of combinations of OpenID and some other various projects. Each of these is trying to address issues of security, validity, and privacy.
The speed of Single Sign On is the biggest efficiency for businesses looking inwardly for gains. (Conry-Murray) However, there are also gains in speed of user management, since updating a single profile will propagate out beyond your intranet or Active Directory, to external sites. Also, it allows customers fast access to relevant information and gives you continually updated contact info for each. For developers and those wishing to give users cross site access the cost of doing so is dramatically lowered since traditional ways of providing Single Sign On were developer intensive and had to be custom created each time a new connection was made. The CardSpace and OpenID combination allows more than SSO to be accomplished between sites, it also shares user information such as purchase history, preferences, or any other matter of data the user allows to be passed. Normally for this type of information to be shared a lot of integration programming would have to be done, costing both companies resources.
This technology is far from being widely adopted and this will hold back the ways it can be implemented to make financial savings and business advantages. Over the next 12 to 18 months businesses will begin to change the way we do business online and interact with our peers. This technology will be a major part of this change.
Works Cited
Conry-Murray, Andrew. “Single Sign-On For The Web?” Information Week 27 August 2007: 64,58.
Consumer Identity and Profile Management. 8 Sept 2007 http://www.verisign.com/research/Con…ent/index.html
Hardt, Dick. OSCON Keynote – Identity 2.0. 2005. http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
Hinchcliffe, Dion. “Identity 1.x: Microsoft Live ID and Google Accounts.” 6 July 2006. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=52
Richards, Jonathan. “Can’t remember your password? Don’t panic.” 26 February 2007. Times Online. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/…cle1441331.ece
Sxip. 5 Sept 2007 http://www.sxip.com/
edu 2.0: welcome to the future of education
August 31, 2007
This is going somewhere interesting. I don’t think I would put my eggs in this basket, but it’s going to push the development of the places I would (do) put my eggs. (and helps reduce the prices)
A totally free courseware or learning management system that seems to be heading in the right direction. Considering what Blackboard charges and what they deliver this becomes very, very attractive. We don’t use Blackboard, but we priced them and testing it heavily for a couple of months. We also looked at WebCT which was acquired by Bb over a year ago. Along with a few other names you might or might not recognize. I kept looking for someone who was taking online course ware and putting a Google spin on it. Simple, streamlined, highly functional to total online courses (Bb and others have stopped short of total online course management, they got stuck in the hybrid/traditional approach) and affordable. We went with Comcourse, and I feel like we found all of these things with them. (Ok, so that’s where my eggs are.)
Maybe more companies like this will pop-up and help push the technology to really help learning and the management of learning. There is value in actually paying for your courseware, like tech support and customization.
…Hmm, it’s late, my brain is fried. I’m done. Sorry.
Management Methods | Management Models | Management Theories
August 16, 2007
In prep for returning to school I was looking for a good management theories website. Thinking I might find a site that summarized the majors. Instead I found this: Value Based Management.net Looks like they have cataloged every possible management theory known to man. Scary stuff.
Management Methods | Management Models | Management Theories
