Stopwatch Marketing Blog

Chris Kieff, in his 1 Good Reason blog, had another – and very interesting – take on the issue raised by Drew McLellan regarding the hassles he endures to avoid changing his preferred dry cleaners.

Chris’s basic point is that he doesn’t change dry cleaners because it would cause him to have to do a bunch of unnecessary work. Quoting from his post: “Let me explain- if I use the same dry cleaner then when I leave the house in the AM it’s a no brainer, out the driveway, two lights and a left, less than 1 mile. While I’m going there, I’m able to make calls, think about whatever I want to, and keep going- business as usual.”

My comment, excerpted below, emphasized that we are all saying the same thing, but using different words:

In our book, which is aimed at helping marketing managers target the right customer time segments, we discuss how time is measurable and definable but is also a proxy for RISK. It occurs to me that all four words – work and change (Chris’s) or time (Drew’s and ours) and risk (ours) – would be viewed by a classical economist as expressing the same idea. They (the economics professor) would likely define these all as something that makes their students eyes glaze over such as “dis-utility.” They would then assign the class to analyze “How much dis-utility is a given consumer willing to endure in order to get the service level – and clean shirts – which they are willing and able to pay for?”

A separate, but important issue: Drew and I put pictures of ourselves on our sites and look, I believe, like what we are – marketing consultants:

Chris’s picture on his website, below, would imply, I think, a different, more laid-back and inventive, though presumably equally effective, approach.

Finally, to Drew: I’ll be happy to pick up your dry cleaning, next time I’m in Des Moines!

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