Random thoughts

things i've been meaning to post about, but haven't


- Wimbledon Pay Equity. This week, Wimbledon announced that the women's and men's champion will make equal money. Women's right advocates rejoiced. This is one of the most ludricrious things I have ever heard of. Sports is entertainment. Compensation should be given based on which of the two sports generates a larger fan base, which gets more sponsors, which gets higher TV rating. In many cases, this might justify HIGHER prize money for the ladies, even though they work less (3 sets versus 5). I wouldn't let the chairman of the All-England Club manage a lemonade stand with these business principles.

- RFID. Somethign I posted on Jonathan Kaplan's blog. As someone who working in consumer packaged good, I feel like I need to comment here. First of all, the experience you describe already exists, and it has nothing to do with RFID. There is a much simpler and efficient way to give customers specific prices-- its called couponing. For a while, every who uses a frequent shopper card gets specific offers (at different values) based on various things in their shopper history (usually purchases of competitive products).

Additionally, some cards will now make custom offers to you when you ENTER the store and scan in your card.

Regarding the example you gave, this would never occur for several reasons-- most notablly whenever you see a discount on a product at your local grocery store, it is funded by the manufacturer, not the grocery store. The manufacturer has no incentive to "raise" prices, since they don't see any of it.

The only really use of RFID in retail (which is mandatory by end of 2009 is to improve inventory management and the amount of product which is actually in-stock.