Tiered Pricing for Angie's List? Not Successful

(2/24/2016) Home improvement service company, Angie's List, admitted that their tiered pricing is not doing a good job. The CEO says the new paid subscribed members tend to just subscribe the cheapest rate, and they have a hard time to convince free or low-paying members to pay more. Angie's List faces some free service competitors like Homebuilder.com. It seems that there is rigidity of raising price, but there is always some room to drag down the price.

Airlines try to save time with speedier boarding process

(6/2/2015) If you fly with several different airlines, you will notice the processed that airlines use are very different. Southwest does not assign seats and board passengers by A/B/C groups that passengers compete (with extra payments) on their seats. Other airlines that assign seats normally have different boarding groups, among them some board passengers in the front first, some board passengers in the back first. You may wonder what is the operational logic behind their processes. Now, Southwest and Delta are trying new approaches to improve their boarding process. If you are their frequent flyer, check if their new process makes a difference.

Apple Pay or CurrentC?

(10/29/2014) Recently, CVS and Rite Aid announced that they will not support Apple Pay. The reason of not-supporting Apple Pay was revealed by New York Time: several retailers (including Walmart, Best Buy, CVS...) are working on a mobile payment platform CurrentC. Supported by these retailers, CurrentC (based on MCX, Merchant Customer Exchange) can save those supporting retailers 2%~3% of commission, which the retailers pay to credit card companies.

Well, it turns out that CurrentC is not that safe at all. They have sent out email to users that "unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of you." (Did Apple do that? just kidding.) In Chinese, we have a saying "三個臭皮匠，勝過一個諸葛亮," which means "Two heads are better than one." However, if most retail heads are incompetent in data security, no matter how many head they form an alliance, they will not be competent either.

What platform will you support? I don't think CurrentC will back off anytime soon because 2% saving is too good to let go.

Restaurant Watches Old Surveillance And Shares Shocking Results On Craigslist

(7/14/2014) I found an interesting article about the back-office angle of waiting in the restaurant. I don't know how 'real' this article is, but it shows some interesting stories about waiting line management.  Are you shocked by the discovery too?

Why Sears is Running Down

(10/22/2013) If one picture is worth a thousand words, then these pictures on Business Insider about Sears is worth of whole page of explaining why people don't shop in Sears anymore. Do you know Sears was one time the largest retailer in the US? Hard to believe, hmm? Or maybe it is "no wonder why."

Website Failures - Diagnosis of Obamacare & Common App

(10/21/2013) Obamacare website (HealthCare.gov) has been full of glitches since Day 1 of its launch. The Republican party was so busy wrestling on government shutdown and totally ignore a great opportunity to nail Obama government. Now the shutdown is over, media and Obama critics start paying attention about how wrong HealthCare.gov is. There is a good analysis on NBCNews today.

I like this comment: “Buying a health plan is a lot more complicated than buying a flight," says Brandon Cruz, president of GoHealth, a private health insurance marketplace. “When you’re buying a health plan, you need to know all the doctors in the network, what you deductible will be, what your co-insurance will be. And the terminology is so foreign.”

What is Obama's temporary solution to this failure? "“So you'll find information about how to talk to a specialist who can help you apply over the phone or to receive a downloadable application you can fill out yourself and mail in,” Obama said."

This is a good lesson for complex website launch.

(10/31/2013) Are Obamacare website's glitches contagious? The "Common App" (a platform that allows high school students to send out their applications to multiple schools at one time) just had a huge problem for their users and high school students cannot submit their applications successfully. Common App is not as new as Obamacare registration website. From the reply of the company's executive, it is "technological glitches from some new technology updates" on their platforms. Many universities are forced to extend their application since there are as many as 800,000 applicants impacted. It is not promising that this problem can be solved before the peak time of application. I bet the enrollment offices in many colleges won't be happy this year because their admission process is forced to be delayed.

T-Mobile Goes No Contract with Subscribers

(3/26/2013) T-Mobile decides to take down the contract with its subscribers, and its starting monthly rate of unlimited phone, txt and data is $50 (well, with download speed limit). Will it be a game changer? Or it is the last survival approach that T-mobile (the smallest major wireless service provider in the U.S. and they keep losing subscribers to other carriers) can have now? Since T-Mobile won't subsidize subscribers high-end smartphones by locking subscribers with contracts, subscribers will have to pay a high-end smartphone with several installments (say $15-20 monthly). Let us wait and see.

My bet is T-Mobile will transforme into like TracFone or Virgin Mobile. Price is not the only criteria that consumers care.

Popularity of Self Service

(10/10/2010) Many consumers like me really enjoy self-service. I love self check-in of Southwests Airlines (Southwest don't assign seats and let early check-in passengers choose the seats! Now they have $10 early-bird to give you an early-check-in number). I would prefer to self check-out in the supermarket if the machine is not too tedious. Now some airlines want the passengers to self-boarding.

Think about what are the benefits of self-service to the customers? (1) Customers know themselves better. (2) Avoid meaningless chic-chat. (3) Self-service is faster for sophisticated consumers.

However, self-service is not for everyone. First the self-service system has to be simple, intuitive.