http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/don-t-fall-for-these-sneaky-marketing-tricks-while-you-re-shopping-544635/
Think you’re too smart to fall for marketing mind games? Check ’em out:
A lot of the scenarios below are pulled from the original text, a review of Predictably Irrational, but I tried to explain them more clearly. Hopefully I didn’t make them more confusing!
THE TRICK: Luring customers with a “bargain” option. When a high-end kitchen goods chain introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When the store added a “deluxe” version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain.
HOW TO AVOID IT: Don’t just buy something on impulse because it’s a bargain. If you’re truly in the market for a bread machine (or a stereo or anything else), compare different models from different stores. And keep in mind that some premium options are there only to make the less expensive options look more appealing.
Related: 7 Little Bargain Shopping Tips That Will Save You Major Money
THE TRICK: Surrounding something worthless with valuable items to make the worthless thing appear valuable. Savador Assael, the Pearl King, single-handedly created the market for black pearls, which were unknown in the industry before 1973. His first attempt to market the pearls was an utter failure; he didn't sell a single pearl. So he went to his friend Harry Winston, and had Winston put them in the window of his 5th Avenue store with an outrageous price tag attached. Then he ran full-page ads in glossy magazines with black pearls next to diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Soon, black pearls were considered precious.
HOW TO AVOID IT: Try to assess different options based on what they’re actually worth. Is a leather handbag with a fancy label and a $1,000 price tag really worth more than a leather handbag with a $500 price tag? Or a $100 price tag? Sure, there are different qualities of leather, but eventually, are you just paying for the label because someone told you it’s worth more?
See our tips: How Not to Pay too Much for Car Repairs.
THE TRICK: Offering new-and-improved anything. A group of MIT students tasted two different beers, and then choose to get a free pint of one of the brews. Brew A was Budweiser. Brew B was Budweiser, plus 2 drops of balsamic vinegar per ounce. When students were not told about the nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the balsamic beer. When students were told about the true nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the Budweiser.
HOW TO AVOID IT: Ignore labels like “premium” or “pro” or “award-winning,” which have no actual merit. Remember that a “new and improved” product might just have slightly different packaging. Or a few drops of vinegar.
Related: 20 ways to live rich on less money!
THE TRICK: Preying on customers’ assumption that expensive items work better. A research team made up a fake painkiller, Veladone-Rx. An attractive woman in a business suit (with a faint Russian accent) told subjects that 92 percent of patients receiving Veladone-Rx reported significant pain relief in 10 minutes, with relief lasting up to 8 hours. When told that the drug cost $2.50 per dose, nearly all of the subjects reported pain relief. When told that the drug cost 10 cents per dose, only half of the subjects reported pain relief.
HOW TO AVOID IT: Don’t automatically assume that expensive items are the best. If you start your shopping by comparing lower-end models, you might realize the high-end models have a bunch of extras you don’t actually need. And when you’re shopping for meds, keep in mind that the product in the store-brand box is often the exact same product as the one in the name-brand box. Ignore the temptation to pay more.
Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen for every one of these tricks.
Anyone else feeling duped? Do you guys do your shopping with a list? Do you comparison shop ahead of time? Or do you just head to the store and assume you’ll be able to sniff out the best bargains?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
An Entrepreneurial Life: By Jay Goltz
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/an-entrepreneurial-life/
An Entrepreneurial Life: By Jay Goltz
I just celebrated my 30th anniversary. One wife, three kids, 10 business start-ups, five business successes, five business misfires. I started my company the year before I got married, right out of school. I have come to realize over the years that I have not had a normal life. That’s because I am not normal; I am an entrepreneur.
It took me a long time to figure out that I am different from most of the people I know. I have never had a full-time job, a savings account for my child’s education, or anyone to answer to besides the bank and 50,000 or so customers. I am also a recovering entrepreneuraholic. Starting a new business can be intoxicating. As with anything intoxicating, moderation is key. There are prices to pay.
First of all, I am not having a midlife crisis. My whole life has been a series of crises — from hiring the wrong people to not getting paid to running out of cash to running out of customers (something new in 2009). These events cannot usually be compartmentalized. They creep into your personal life, if you have a personal life.
I can speak only for myself. Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. But here are some words that I believe describe many successful entrepreneurs: independent, intense, strong-willed, obsessive, competitive, intolerant, thrill-seeking, adventurous, visionary, crazy, self-absorbed. With short attention spans. Perhaps some of these characteristics are necessary to be successful.
Now, suppose we were to make a list of words that would describe a good or easy-to-live-with spouse or parent. Would any of the same words be on this list? Hmmm. I don’t think so. Suffice it to say that the traits that make someone successful at work can be challenging at home. Can someone be different at home than at work? I think so, but only to a degree. I’ve come to believe that a real hero is someone who figures out how to leave his problems at work. It isn’t easy. I frequently haven’t succeeded. I’m not even sure that I always tried. I was young and ignorant.
It’s so easy to justify working long hours, missing family events and being stressed out in the noble quest of providing for the family. I accept the reality that if you want to be successful, you sometimes need to put the business (or job) first. I wish it were as simple as just deciding to put the family first — and maybe it should be. But entrepreneurship is not always about our wishes. Sometimes we have critical responsibilities that can’t wait: to a customer, to an employee, or for the bills that have to be paid. At some point, though, once the business is successful, it is no longer about providing for the family. It becomes more about ambition, ego and competition. We all make choices, some conscious, some not.
Everyone talks about balance. There is no balance. Balance is perfect. There is nothing perfect in work/life balance. It is about compromise, choices and, often, regret. Here is the irony of ambition: The same ambition that drives people to be successful won’t let them enjoy being successful. They pay a terrible price for their success, as do their families, but they are never successful enough. Me? I feel successful. I didn’t always. I never felt as if I did enough, made enough or achieved my potential. I have redefined what it means to achieve my potential. Sometimes controlling your ambitions can be a good thing. Sometimes smaller is better. Grow or die is an insane war cry for entrepreneurs. Many times it is grow and die. The bottom line is more important than the top line.
My business day is very different from what it was 20 years ago. I would go from one urgent matter to another, all day long — from a customer to a production person to an insurance agent to the accounting firm to the newspaper’s ad sales representative. It is normal and necessary for an entrepreneur to wear 10 different hats in the course of an hour. But it can make your head hurt.
I remember a morning when my mother called me at 9 o’clock to tell me that my grandfather was going in for emergency surgery. She asked me to call my sisters to tell them. At 4 p.m. one of my sisters called to ask why I hadn’t called her. I was speechless, and mortified. I had forgotten. About five seconds after hanging up with my mother, I had got caught up in my typical day of moving from one crisis to another. I felt stupid, irresponsible and out of control.
This chaos went on for a few more years until I learned how to hire, train, manage and empower. It also didn’t hurt that my company’s growth started to slow from more than 30 percent a year to about 10 percent. I have learned that bad things can happen in your life. I don’t ever want to be in a position that I can’t take some time off to deal with whatever comes up. I guess I’m trying to approach normality.
I have three wonderful children that I don’t think I screwed up too much. And I have a loving wife who has put up with all of the nonsense that goes with entrepreneurship. I hear the line from “My Way”: “Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew.” I think of my wife. I get teary-eyed. And then I go to work. I’m trying. Happy anniversary.
Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.
An Entrepreneurial Life: By Jay Goltz
I just celebrated my 30th anniversary. One wife, three kids, 10 business start-ups, five business successes, five business misfires. I started my company the year before I got married, right out of school. I have come to realize over the years that I have not had a normal life. That’s because I am not normal; I am an entrepreneur.
It took me a long time to figure out that I am different from most of the people I know. I have never had a full-time job, a savings account for my child’s education, or anyone to answer to besides the bank and 50,000 or so customers. I am also a recovering entrepreneuraholic. Starting a new business can be intoxicating. As with anything intoxicating, moderation is key. There are prices to pay.
First of all, I am not having a midlife crisis. My whole life has been a series of crises — from hiring the wrong people to not getting paid to running out of cash to running out of customers (something new in 2009). These events cannot usually be compartmentalized. They creep into your personal life, if you have a personal life.
I can speak only for myself. Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. But here are some words that I believe describe many successful entrepreneurs: independent, intense, strong-willed, obsessive, competitive, intolerant, thrill-seeking, adventurous, visionary, crazy, self-absorbed. With short attention spans. Perhaps some of these characteristics are necessary to be successful.
Now, suppose we were to make a list of words that would describe a good or easy-to-live-with spouse or parent. Would any of the same words be on this list? Hmmm. I don’t think so. Suffice it to say that the traits that make someone successful at work can be challenging at home. Can someone be different at home than at work? I think so, but only to a degree. I’ve come to believe that a real hero is someone who figures out how to leave his problems at work. It isn’t easy. I frequently haven’t succeeded. I’m not even sure that I always tried. I was young and ignorant.
It’s so easy to justify working long hours, missing family events and being stressed out in the noble quest of providing for the family. I accept the reality that if you want to be successful, you sometimes need to put the business (or job) first. I wish it were as simple as just deciding to put the family first — and maybe it should be. But entrepreneurship is not always about our wishes. Sometimes we have critical responsibilities that can’t wait: to a customer, to an employee, or for the bills that have to be paid. At some point, though, once the business is successful, it is no longer about providing for the family. It becomes more about ambition, ego and competition. We all make choices, some conscious, some not.
Everyone talks about balance. There is no balance. Balance is perfect. There is nothing perfect in work/life balance. It is about compromise, choices and, often, regret. Here is the irony of ambition: The same ambition that drives people to be successful won’t let them enjoy being successful. They pay a terrible price for their success, as do their families, but they are never successful enough. Me? I feel successful. I didn’t always. I never felt as if I did enough, made enough or achieved my potential. I have redefined what it means to achieve my potential. Sometimes controlling your ambitions can be a good thing. Sometimes smaller is better. Grow or die is an insane war cry for entrepreneurs. Many times it is grow and die. The bottom line is more important than the top line.
My business day is very different from what it was 20 years ago. I would go from one urgent matter to another, all day long — from a customer to a production person to an insurance agent to the accounting firm to the newspaper’s ad sales representative. It is normal and necessary for an entrepreneur to wear 10 different hats in the course of an hour. But it can make your head hurt.
I remember a morning when my mother called me at 9 o’clock to tell me that my grandfather was going in for emergency surgery. She asked me to call my sisters to tell them. At 4 p.m. one of my sisters called to ask why I hadn’t called her. I was speechless, and mortified. I had forgotten. About five seconds after hanging up with my mother, I had got caught up in my typical day of moving from one crisis to another. I felt stupid, irresponsible and out of control.
This chaos went on for a few more years until I learned how to hire, train, manage and empower. It also didn’t hurt that my company’s growth started to slow from more than 30 percent a year to about 10 percent. I have learned that bad things can happen in your life. I don’t ever want to be in a position that I can’t take some time off to deal with whatever comes up. I guess I’m trying to approach normality.
I have three wonderful children that I don’t think I screwed up too much. And I have a loving wife who has put up with all of the nonsense that goes with entrepreneurship. I hear the line from “My Way”: “Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew.” I think of my wife. I get teary-eyed. And then I go to work. I’m trying. Happy anniversary.
Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Five Habits of Millionaires
by Barbara Reinhold
Monster Contributing Writer
http://career-tips.monster.com/salary-trends/Five-Habits-of-Millionaires/IBS.aspx?key=det
According to a study of college students at the Ernst & Young International Intern
Leadership Conference in Orlando, Florida, 59 percent of these young leaders expect to be millionaires within their lifetime. What's more, 5 percent of them expect to hit the million-dollar mark while in their 20s.
And the super-rich are a growing group. The top 0.1 percent of the population's average income was $3 million in 2002, up two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980.
Earned Money vs. Easy Money
Easy money usually comes from inheritance or luck, such as winning the lottery. The track record of people who get their money through the lottery or other windfalls is usually very different from those who created their wealth themselves or who planned for an expected inheritance. Lottery winners are often a sorry lot; more than 90 percent use up their winnings within 10 years -- some go through their money in weeks or months.
But there are some consistent patterns among those people who earn or plan to inherit their money, and these five strategies may be worth emulating.
1. Avoid the Earn-to-Spend Mentality
Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You, points out that to increase wealth, it's essential to emulate millionaires who view money as something to save and invest, rather than income to spend. Many wealthy people live quite simply, he points out, choosing less pretentious homes than they could theoretically afford and opting for financial independence over material showmanship.
2. Focus
LeBoeuf also counsels resisting the impulse to be scattered in your efforts and interests: "Winners focus; losers spray." And goals that are clearly written down are easier to keep in focus.
3. Do Whatever Is Necessary to Meet Your Goal
People who earn their millions are able not only to focus but persevere in the pursuit of their goals. One single mom entrepreneur, Melissa Clark-Reynolds, started her first business, a health and safety consultancy, when she had a young son. En route to her goal of being a millionaire by age 35, Clarke-Reynolds and her son ate lots of pizza, did homework late at night and often slept at the office. She is now a chief executive mentor for Empower New Zealand, a global business consulting firm headquartered in London.
4. Take Calculated Risks
You have to take strategic risks to earn and grow money. And a little rebelliousness seems to help too. One interesting study found a majority of male millionaire entrepreneurs had been in trouble with school authorities or the police during their adolescence.
5. Be Generous
And why doesn't it surprise us that millionaires are often very generous? Sometimes it's for the tax breaks, obviously, but often it's not. One Jewish Swiss millionaire, for instance, flew to Israel to give $5,000 in cash to a waiter at a Jerusalem café who foiled a Palestinian suicide bombing. Among the most generous of millionaires are those from North America, who are, according to a Merrill Lynch Cap-Gemini report, two to five times more likely to give to causes they value than their European counterparts.
These five habits are a pretty good prescription for living happily even if you're not a millionaire.
But LeBoeuf insists it's not so unusual to be a millionaire. As of 2004, there were 8.2 million households with a net worth of more than $1 million. And are the folks in those households happy? Yes, says professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in the UK. After studying more than 9,000 people over eight years, Oswald concluded that people who come into money are happier. The happiest among them, he says, seem to be "highly educated, well-paid women who have jobs."
And how much money does the professor say it takes to be happy? "About $1 million, give or take a little."
Monster Contributing Writer
http://career-tips.monster.com/salary-trends/Five-Habits-of-Millionaires/IBS.aspx?key=det
According to a study of college students at the Ernst & Young International Intern
Leadership Conference in Orlando, Florida, 59 percent of these young leaders expect to be millionaires within their lifetime. What's more, 5 percent of them expect to hit the million-dollar mark while in their 20s.
And the super-rich are a growing group. The top 0.1 percent of the population's average income was $3 million in 2002, up two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980.
Earned Money vs. Easy Money
Easy money usually comes from inheritance or luck, such as winning the lottery. The track record of people who get their money through the lottery or other windfalls is usually very different from those who created their wealth themselves or who planned for an expected inheritance. Lottery winners are often a sorry lot; more than 90 percent use up their winnings within 10 years -- some go through their money in weeks or months.
But there are some consistent patterns among those people who earn or plan to inherit their money, and these five strategies may be worth emulating.
1. Avoid the Earn-to-Spend Mentality
Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You, points out that to increase wealth, it's essential to emulate millionaires who view money as something to save and invest, rather than income to spend. Many wealthy people live quite simply, he points out, choosing less pretentious homes than they could theoretically afford and opting for financial independence over material showmanship.
2. Focus
LeBoeuf also counsels resisting the impulse to be scattered in your efforts and interests: "Winners focus; losers spray." And goals that are clearly written down are easier to keep in focus.
3. Do Whatever Is Necessary to Meet Your Goal
People who earn their millions are able not only to focus but persevere in the pursuit of their goals. One single mom entrepreneur, Melissa Clark-Reynolds, started her first business, a health and safety consultancy, when she had a young son. En route to her goal of being a millionaire by age 35, Clarke-Reynolds and her son ate lots of pizza, did homework late at night and often slept at the office. She is now a chief executive mentor for Empower New Zealand, a global business consulting firm headquartered in London.
4. Take Calculated Risks
You have to take strategic risks to earn and grow money. And a little rebelliousness seems to help too. One interesting study found a majority of male millionaire entrepreneurs had been in trouble with school authorities or the police during their adolescence.
5. Be Generous
And why doesn't it surprise us that millionaires are often very generous? Sometimes it's for the tax breaks, obviously, but often it's not. One Jewish Swiss millionaire, for instance, flew to Israel to give $5,000 in cash to a waiter at a Jerusalem café who foiled a Palestinian suicide bombing. Among the most generous of millionaires are those from North America, who are, according to a Merrill Lynch Cap-Gemini report, two to five times more likely to give to causes they value than their European counterparts.
These five habits are a pretty good prescription for living happily even if you're not a millionaire.
But LeBoeuf insists it's not so unusual to be a millionaire. As of 2004, there were 8.2 million households with a net worth of more than $1 million. And are the folks in those households happy? Yes, says professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in the UK. After studying more than 9,000 people over eight years, Oswald concluded that people who come into money are happier. The happiest among them, he says, seem to be "highly educated, well-paid women who have jobs."
And how much money does the professor say it takes to be happy? "About $1 million, give or take a little."
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