Given Fewer Coupons, Shoppers Snub Macy’s

This story tells you how important coupons are ..

Now the company’s chief executive, Terry J. Lundgren, one of the brightest stars in American retailing, is pleading mea culpa — and backtracking. Macy’s pledges to issue plenty of coupons for the holiday shopping season.

It’s a lesson that other companies have also learned the hard way. Since the first coupon was issued for the Coca-Cola Company in 1894, companies have occasionally tried to take them away — and suffered. Cuts by the Ruby Tuesday chain in 2004 hurt sales. Procter & Gamble’s effort in 1996 led to boycotts.

Even in this era of Internet shopping, it seems, Americans are wedded to a low-tech form of marketing: the dotted-line clip-out coupon.

For years, Karen Gundling, 41, a communications consultant in Parma, Ohio, relied on 20-percent-off coupons from Kaufmann’s in Cleveland to buy shoes. Then Macy’s took over. “Now that Macy’s doesn’t do coupons, I don’t buy shoes there,” Ms. Gundling said.

Mr. Lundgren said that abruptly curtailing discounts like coupons was Macy’s biggest misstep, contributing to four consecutive months of falling store sales this spring. Macy’s stock has dropped more than 40 percent since it bought the May stores. Mr. Lundgren said his plan “will take longer than we had planned or expected,” adding that “the strategy is crystal clear, and I know we are on the right track.”

Despite their dowdy image, coupons remain a huge business. In 2006, companies issued 279 billion of them, or roughly 1,000 per person, up 13 percent in four years, according to NCH Marketing Services in Deerfield, Ill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/business/29coupons.html?em&ex=1191297600&en=f6989e40f278c93c&ei=5087%0A

Operators are making better use of Web-based technology to reach customers.

Customizing information: Meanwhile, AVI Food Systems in Warren, Ohio, is testing one-on-one customized messaging with real-time communication of targeted messages to student laptops, PDAs and computers, says Dawn Perry, vice president of marketing. “We’re working on integration with Windows Vista software based on live feeds,” says Perry. “This generation is about customization or personalization just for them.”

At Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, AVI is tailoring food items to individual students’ tastes, and Perry says the operation has seen “a significant increase in sales.”

This fall at the University of California at Berkeley, Kim LaPean, marketing coordinator for CalDining, will be putting LCD screens at main retail locations “for quick marketing blurbs, similar to the Jet Blue mini-advertising before takeoff.” The screens will be placed where students wait in line and will have “short, relevant, fun, frequently updated” messages. “We’ll be working on some podcasting later this year,” LaPean adds.

At Virginia Tech University, Marketing & Communications Manager Katie Younger Gehrt implemented an interactive kiosk in a dining center as a way to give students nutrition information. It connects to the department’s Web site so users can access daily menus and calculate caloric intake. A Web page on the site will be updated to include both podcasts and video clips “as a way to quickly convey information in an engaging way.”

http://www.fsdmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74749

SERVICE: The Real Product of Your Restaurant

Measure Your Service Just as You Measure Your Drinks

Because service is such an important restaurant ingredient, it’s critical to try to measure it. Setting up systems to do that doesn’t need to be elaborate, complex or unduly time-consuming. Many successful methods are informal and simple.

Creating a customer feedback system gives you the opportunity to discover potential problems early and do something about them. But to be effective, your methods of gathering and measuring customer feedback must be consistent, and you and your staff must review and study the results frequently.

Because service is an elusive and intangible concept, the more customer feedback you can acquire the better (as long as the process doesn’t annoy the customer). The first line of feedback is your staff’s observations. If you ask them for their opinions and show that you are open to candid responses, your staff can provide a wealth of information on what’s working and what’s not. Moreover, they’ll appreciate your interest, and respect that you care about what is happening on the floor. Periodically managers need to ask: “How’s service going?” If there is a problem, the servers will generally be the first to know (right after the customer) and steps can be initiated to correct problems.

See full article here http://www.restaurantowner.com/public/301.cfm

Two Steps to Better Service at Your Restaurant

First impressions will take you only so far. Last week, we illustrated how consistency is key to the success of your restaurant.

Even if you leave diners with a good experience the first time they visit, if their next one is poor, they may:

	Never return
	Relay their bad experience to others

In this post, I’d like to suggest two steps to take, whether you think this is an issue for your restaurant or not. In any case, these ideas should help you to identify hidden problems and work with your staff to fix them.

Step One: Identify Problems

It’s probably not a common occurrence for people to storm out of your restaurant or scream bloody murder at your staff, so the problems you need to focus on are probably hidden.

The truth is that the average person isn’t so assertive and will politely leave and never come back if they have a particularly poor experience. It is impossible to know what they didn’t like without asking.

It can be a challenge to obtain information, but it is possible, and it’s the first step toward improvement.

Get Input From Your Customers

The best way is to survey your customers directly, using a multi-faceted approach:

See full story here http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/two-steps-to-better-service-at-your-restaurant.htm

Consumers find new voice in taking gripes online.

 The Internet is changing the way consumers complain about companies, products, and services.

Instead of grumbling to a neighbor or filing a complaint with the company, a regulator, or the Better Business Bureau, more and more consumers are taking their beefs online, either contributing to gripe sites or setting up their own. There’s even a website called Webgripesites.com that catalogs complaint sites and offers guidance to consumers on how to set up new ones

Click Here For Full Story