Marketing

“Marketing takes a day to learn, but a lifetime to master.”

according to America’s most famous marketing professor, Phil Kotler

“A loyalty card,” says Spence, “is a piece of plastic. Most loyalty programs are plastic. They do nothing more than replace traditional paper coupons with electronic coupons. Why would that generate loyalty?”

FastCompany

McDonald’s (MCD) fixed the food. Now it has an effort quietly brewing to bring another menu item up a notch: the coffee.

No announcement has been made. But the fast-food giant says it expects to test, then roll out, “premium coffee” to its 13,000 U.S. stores later this year or in 2006. Premium coffee uses higher-quality beans – and is pricier.

“Coffee has increased in popularity beyond a breakfast beverage,” spokesman William Whitman says. “We see an opportunity to bring our customers a better-tasting product at a value price.”

USA Today

Yum Brands Inc. which owns the Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s and A&W chains is offering free, four-week memberships at Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp. clubs in January to people bent on indulging without bulging.

The timing of the promotion coincides with the ritual of making a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. It also comes as many fast-food chains work to blunt the negative publicity received in recent years from obesity-related lawsuits and the documentary film “Super Size Me.”

One health expert viewed the health club offer as a smart public relations stunt.

“The fast-food industry in most people’s minds is equated with being fat and sick,” said John McDougall, an advisory board member with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. “What this does is provide good PR because it associates these restaurants with exercise and the concept of good health.”

From L.A. Times

“The consumer is not an idiot. She is your wife.”

David Ogilvy

Survey: Young adults eat out almost once a day

By Andrea Coombes, CBS.MarketWatch.com

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) — “Have access to take-out food, will eat it” sums up Americans’ dining habits these days.

Generation Y Americans, those age 16 to 27, eat out 24 times a month on average, according to the November survey of 1,000 consumers by Technomic, a Chicago-based market-research firm focused on the food industry…

https://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/12/01/expensive.martini.reut/
NEW YORK (Reuters) — Drinkers might want to keep a clear head when ordering a martini at New York’s historic Algonquin Hotel or they might pay $10,000 for that cold sip.

The landmark hotel, where famed wit Dorothy Parker and fellow literary lights at the Round Table imbibed, offers a $10,000 martini, complete with a loose diamond at the bottom.

No one has ordered one yet, in the martini’s first week on the menu, but the hotel hopes some romantic soul will buy one any day now.

“We haven’t had any buyers yet, but a lot of people are talking about it,” said Anthony Melchiorri, the hotel’s general manager, on Wednesday.

After watching the rest of the retail world get fat on the popularity of reloadable gift cards, the restaurant industry is jumping into the fray just in time for the holidays.

Everyone from McDonald’s to Dunkin’ Donuts to Jack in the Box has added, or soon plans to add, “stored value” cards you can reload with more bucks.

“It’s become the greens fee for being a serious player in the restaurant business,” says John Glass, analyst at CIBC World Markets. [Read more…] about USATODAY.com – Restaurants serve up reloadable gift cards