Washington Post (May 23)
During Q1, “another 2.3 million customers (or 7 percent of the total) cut the cord to traditional cable — the fastest cancel-my-subscription pace ever recorded.” So far cable news has not been greatly impacted, though “the rest of the cable lineup has sagged disastrously…. USA Network, once the most popular cable channel, has lost 75 percent of its nightly audience over 10 years. FX is down 68 percent. History Channel is off by 65 percent.” It probably won’t be long “when an exodus of cable subscribers leaves cable operators unable to afford the hefty license fees that those news programmers now command.”
Tags: Audience, Cable channel, Cable news, Cancel, Cord cutters, Customers, Exodus, FX, History Channel, Impacted, License fees, Q1, Subscribers, Subscription, USA Network
Reuters (August 10)
“What a difference a year makes: Consumers have gotten off the couch…. There is evidence that the streaming market has hit a saturation point. Netflix lost 1.3 million American and Canadian customers in the second quarter, where it enjoys the highest average revenue per user.”
Tags: ARPU, Canada, Consumers, Couch, Customers, Difference, Netflix, Q2, Saturation, Streaming market, U.S.
Chicago Tribune (September 24)
“Many employers pushed Labor Day return to office plans back as the delta variant fueled a resurgence in COVID-19 cases—another setback for businesses catering to the Loop’s formerly bustling office crowd. While businesses like coffee and shoe repair shops are optimistic their customers will eventually return, they may be downtown less often and may need time to rebuild old habits.”
Tags: COVID-19, Customers, Delta variant, Downtown, Employers, Labor Day, Loop, Office, Old habits, Resurgence, Return, Setback, Shops
Philadelphia Inquirer (August 24)
“This is a new phase of vaccinations’ Get tough. Restaurants, cruise lines, colleges, and a growing number of employers—hospitals, municipal governments, Amtrak, Citigroup—are telling workers and customers to prove they’ve been vaccinated or go elsewhere. And all that was before Monday’s full authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”
Tags: Amtrak, Authorization, Citigroup, Colleges, Cruise lines, Customers, Employers, Hospitals, Pfizer-BioNTech, Phase, Restaurants, Vaccinations, Workers
WARC (May 6)
With plunging online sales, “Adidas and Nike are the latest western brands to feel the effects of China’s attacks on companies that criticize reported human rights abuses against Uyghurs in the country’s Xinjiang region.” There have also been calls for boycotts of H&M, Burberry and Uniqlo. “The reaction highlights the tension foreign brands face between speaking out, on the one hand, as their domestic customers increasingly demand, and, on the other, risking commercial damage by offending Beijing.”
Tags: Abuses, Adidas, Attacks, Boycotts, Brands, Burberry, China, Customers, H&M, Human rights, Nike, Online sales, Risk, Tension, Uniqlo, Uyghurs
New York Times (April 7)
“Businesses and universities want fast, easy ways to see if students and customers are vaccinated, but conservative politicians have turned ‘vaccine passports’ into a cultural flash point.”
Tags: Businesses, Conservative, Cultural, Customers, Easy, FAST, Flash point, Politicians, Students, Universities, Vaccinated, Vaccine passports
LA Times (September 11)
“America’s malls are dying. Owners are hoping virtual reality and fitness centers will save them.” As merchants increasingly withdraw in the face of e-tailers, Credit Suisse “recently predicted 20% to 25% of U.S. malls will shut down within five years…. To survive, malls need to set aside long-established models that rely on two or more anchor tenants to draw customers and, instead, develop a mixture of retail, entertainment and housing.”
Tags: Anchor tenants, Credit Suisse, Customers, Dying, e-tailers, Entertainment, Fitness, Housing, Malls, Retail, U.S., Virtual reality
Website Magazine (February Issue)
“Mobile traffic is past its tipping point with roughly 52 percent of web traffic currently deriving from smartphones versus desktops…To date, forward-thinking ecommerce companies have worked to ensure their sites were primed for mobile viewing, turning to responsive web design (RWD) as the solution.” Now, however, the move is toward adaptive design. Although it requires more coding, “it offers a whole range of other prioritizing features on mobile that customers crave versus receiving a shallow, shrunk-down version of the desktop site that leaves too much to be desired.”
Tags: Adaptive, Coding, Customers, Desktops, Ecommerce, Mobile, Responsive, Smartphones, Tipping point, Web design, Web traffic
Fortune (December 22)
“Technology and globalization are leading to more and faster disruption than ever. To stay ahead, smart companies are turning to design to better connect with customers and find their competitive advantage.” In a “hyper-connected world, “design can help bring coherence to the chaos” and “Fortune 500 companies are hiring chief design officers and investing heavily in design centers and innovation centers. Professional services firms, too, have joined the fray.”
Tags: Chaos, Chief design officers, Coherence, Competitive advantage, Customers, Design, Disruption, Fortune 500, Globalization, Hyper-connected, Technology
Cover (March 16)
Disclosure of “how many claims are paid out is absolutely the right thing to do” in the insurance industry. “Paying claims is the only way our industry can prove its worth to its customers and advisers…. This is why publication is so important. Claims statistics give advisers the evidence to help them reassure clients who believe policies hardly ever pay out. Honesty and openness is the best policy.”
Tags: Advisers, Claims, Customers, Disclosure, Evidence, Honesty, Insurance, Openness, Statistics
