The importance of supply chain solutions relative to a company’s efforts to maintain and improve quality are almost impossible to underplay. When enacting quality improvement programs, any company would do well to examine its supply chain model and processes as a fundamental means of improving quality with suppliers, partners, and customers.

In business-to-business (B2B) direct marketing, I’m often asked about what kind of response rates to expect about the most productive media channels, the best lists, the best time to conduct a campaign, the most effective qualification questions. I always answer the same way, much to the frustration of my listener: “It depends.”

 But when the subject of the best offer comes up, I don’t have to hedge: “It’s information.”

The rise of neuromarketing has already begun to provide companies and researchers with greater insight into consumer behavior than consumers themselves are capable of giving. Neuromarketing tools such as facial-affective recognition, eye tracking, and fMRI technology can illuminate the neurobiological responses that may underlie people’s likes and dislikes.

Carrying your smartphone around everywhere has become a way of life. In doing so, you produce a surprising amount of data about your role in the economy—where you shop, work, travel, and generally hang out.

Thasos Group, founded at MIT in 2011, has developed a platform that leverages those data, in anonymized and aggregated form, to measure economies for industry and investors.

In our April 13, 2018, episode of QDL, we talked about anti-hacker robots, data privacy, and new product introduction.

“HoneyBot Lures in Digital Troublemakers”

MIT nerds come up with a tasty target for IoT hackers. But this one fights back.

Cost of quality (CoQ) is certainly not a new topic. It was first described in 1956 by American quality control expert Armand V. Feigenbaum in a Harvard Business Review article. As you likely already know, CoQ consists of four categories: internal and external failures, and appraisal and prevention activities. It sounds easy to measure, but as you also likely know, it isn’t.

When Tide and other detergent manufacturers developed colorful, convenient pods designed to be tossed into washing machines and dishwashers, they never expected teenagers would try to eat them. But what was dubbed the “Tide pod challenge” quickly went viral, with teens posting videos of themselves spewing soap across social media channels. The American Association of Poison Control Centers last year reported 220 teens were exposed to the toxic pods, and about 40 cases have been reported so far this year.

I have written more than a 100 blog posts about leadership, strategy, and culture. Within that portfolio are several accounts of business reinvention and transformation. Yet it was only a few months ago that I composed my first post on another type of reinvention: personal reinvention. My own. 

Retailers and brands convened in New York recently to experience the National Retail Federation’s Retail’s Big Show, and one of the biggest topics on attendees’ minds was technology. From automation to personalization to social marketing, the growing importance of technology in the shopping experience was definitely top of mind for retailers and brands, including those in the food and beverage space.