Customer Reviews

Breaking Compromises: Opportunities for Action in Consumer Markets from the Boston Consulting Group

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A collection of papers from the Boston Consulting Group from the past four years. They have not dated which is nice.

Occasionally reads a little like a BCG presentation so can be a bit dry - but the CONTENT is great.

Has chapters of related material ie. REAL brand management for the 21st century; dealing with e-commerce effectively and strategically without wasting money.

Nice big picture stuff but with meat - you could actually use the material to kick start some thinking in your company.

Good stuff!

The essays in this book were originally published over the last 10 years and present many coordinated perspectives on key consumer issues. In some consumer products and service companies, the functional silos argue over what to do and reach internal compromises that ignore providing customers, purchasers, and consumers with what they want. You would have to work in a dozen companies over a number of years to capture all of the useful observations in these essays. I found the work to be solid except for an emphasis on overly coordinating brand activities within a sector, and perhaps a little too much of a focus on the financial value of all this.

The sections cover Operating Efficiency, Retailing, Marketing and Selling, the Consumer, the Brand, E-Commerce, Global Markets, and Staying Ahead. I thought that the best sections were the first four.

My favorite essays were:

Don't Get Trapped in the Skills Gap;

Make in a Week What You Sell in a Week;

Price by Design;

The Power of Direct Store Delivery;

Inner Cities Are the Next Retailing Frontier;

Levels of the Game in Frequency Marketing;

The Research Advantage;

Winning a Segment-of-One at a Time;

Customer Retention;

One Size Doesn't Fit All;

Total Brand Management;

Winning on the Net;

Meeting the Local Challenge in China;

The Paradox of Success.

Whenever we address basic consumer issues, we should all be sure to remember the bad experiences we have every day: The line that doesn't move for 15 minutes; the person who cannot help you; the endless telephone menus; on-line help menus that don't help; and out of stocks. And that's before we get to rude and annoying service. It is easy to forget how bad things are. I recently went to a seminar where the panelists discussed how they spent their time waiting for slow Web pages to load.

If you are in a consumer products or services company, at least one of these essays will immediately improve your business. Only you will know which one!

Go beyond hitting budgets to building purchases and experiences that consumers look forward to!