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Brand loyalty.  Historically, customers rewarded consumer product companies with their consistent purchases.  But times have changed.  According to Catalina, a consumer loyalty firm, 90% of the leading household goods brands are losing market share.   Why?  Consumers are not as loyal to brands as they once were because ‘loyalty’ is no longer...

I fly a lot. One of the benefits of this is being exposed to random pieces of data in magazines, advertisements, and on airplane napkins. Last week, I read that an American Express Open survey discovered 18 percent of people have eaten a co-worker’s lunch. You...

The staffs at three Ohio Sonic Drive-ins walked off the job en masse thanks to a rumor that was spread by a disgruntled manager.  Workers were reportedly led to believe that their hourly wages were being cut to $4 an hour plus tips from the $8.55 an hour minimum...

CNN recently interviewed a young guy who started a junk removal business with a beat-up truck.  Entrepreneur Brian Scudamore now owns four brands with 250 franchises across the United States, Canada and Australia.  Recall 1-800-GOT-JUNK?  That’s him and his 5,000 employees, who will haul in $400 million this year. ...

Move over Millennials – you are no longer the singular topic of conversation in the workplace.  Gen Z is rapidly joining the workforce, with the oldest members of the generation being 23 years-old.  (Demographers typically use birth years between 1995 and 2005.)  By 2020, Gen Zers will comprise 36 percent...

In addition to rising populations, so too is the average life expectancy.  The official list can be found here, with Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia and Spain rounding out the top five at an average of 83 years old.  While this is positive data, many employers underestimate the struggle that employees...

In my frustration about the fact that so few people return messages nowadays, as I was raised that it’s rude to ignore people, I turned to the internet to get some answers.  I landed on an article in Psychology Today, which pinpointed three key reasons why people ignore messages:

When the concept of open office space emerged, I thought it was a bad idea.  I saw no value in stripping people of their privacy and making them sit in large open spaces, akin to placing a herd of cattle in a pen.  However, I remained open, awaiting the...

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the saturation of smartphones in rich countries, along with increasing prices, and only incremental improvements, have meant plummeting sales of the devices. Although half of the world’s population has a smartphone, increasing concerns about smartphone addiction are driving device makers to develop the...

Want your kid to be the next Jack Welch or Nancy Pelosi?  According to a study by Kelton Research, you should get them a pet.  A whopping 93 percent of C-suite executives grew up with a pet, according to the research, and 78 percent of executives attribute their success...