Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

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Trading Up Trends

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Silverstein and Fiske continue to make their case that, “… it is clear consumers around the world are willing to pay a premium for goods they believe deliver better quality and higher performance, along with emotional benefits, than do conventional goods.

Research indicates the Trading Up phenomenon is not limited to the United States. Japan, United Kingdom, Spain, Scandinavia, and most other Northern European countries are also experiencing similar shifts in consumers trading up to new luxury goods.

Furthermore, the authors contend, Consumers today have more discretionary income, more cash, more product knowledge and more sophisticated tastes, and have far more product choice than ever before. We believe that consumers will only grow more discriminating in their purchases. They will trade up and trade down, with great care, in every category of goods.”

https://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2004/06/trading_up_upda.html [Read more…] about Trading Up Trends

Maple-Sap Vodka

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“Microdistilleriers are distilling booze with some offbeat ingredients,” reports Christopher Lawton in The Wall Street Journal. Duncan’s Spirits of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, www.vermontspirits.com “makes one vodka from 100 percent maple sap and another from milk sugar.” Its founder is “a former anthropologist … who studied Southeast Asian hill tribes.” That would explain it. Also in this mix are Bardenay Distilleries, makers of a sugar cane-based gin, and Essential Spirits Alambic Distilleries, www.essentialspirits.com, producers of “a beer-brandy hybrid called Bierschnaps.”

[Read more…] about Maple-Sap Vodka

Click and Eat On the Road

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OpenTable.com, a San Francisco-based Web site offers free reservations at more than 1,800 restaurants in roughly 50 American cities.

The service is one of many online destinations for those who want to find good food while on the road or at home. And like restaurants themselves, the Web sites with the greatest ambitions frequently fall short, while those content to serve a niche succeed nicely. [Read more…] about Click and Eat On the Road

Wired News: Wi-Fi: If Not Free, Then How?

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https://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63732,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
From fancy hotels to fast-food joints, the number of venues offering high-speed wireless Internet access is expected to grow at a heady clip this year. But industry analysts aren’t expecting laptop users and their credit cards to follow.

In the wake of the demise of several large builders of Wi-Fi networks, including last month’s closure of Intel-backed Cometa Networks, analysts say one lesson the industry has learned the hard way is that laptop owners remain reluctant to pay by the hour for online access.

Hotels of the future

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London-based Thomson Holidays, one of the U.K.’s biggest tour operators, hosted the “Future Holiday Forum,” with leaders in travel, technology and design. The most surprising part of its report, “2024: A Holiday Odyssey,” predicted that the hotel of the future will be a foldable pod on stilts, which can be plunked down in remote locations. The pods will be self-sustainable, and guests can choose the images they want to be projected on the walls. When a destination falls out of fashion, whether due to demand or terrorism, the pod can simply be folded up and moved.
image [Read more…] about Hotels of the future

Simple Beer

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Making a “simple, mainstream beer was more of a challenge than” Kelly Taylor, director of brewing operations at Greenpoint Beer Works in Brooklyn U.S.A., had anticipated, reports Robin Finn in The New York Times. [Read more…] about Simple Beer