Letters to the Editor
[Re: Loose Cannon: The Old Man and the Vitamin C, Direct Newsline, Sept. 22, 2003]:
I’m not sure exactly where you are going with this grocery article. In a meeting with the top management of Dominick’s Finer Foods about fifteen years ago, the topic of automation came up. The late adopters that thought they would wait until the UPC technology settled out. They aren’t around any more.
You may have grocery stores like this in New York City, but out here in middle America the only comparable ones would be seasonal roadside stands, which I wouldn’t call real businesses.
Bottom line, the kid is right… or the dad has long since retired.
John Miglautsch
Executive director
International Society for Strategic Marketing
Milwaukee
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I think the basic reason a company would “technologize” for the wrong reason is because software companies have not done a good enough job of finding out the exact needs of businesses. As a result, they write one platform and they try to fit every business into that one box.
It is obvious that no one knows a particular business or its customers better than the business owner, especially a smaller business.
Case in point: We could not find an off-the-shelf application to help us process particular data into a specific format. None of the more than 20 businesses we contacted were willing to modify any of their software to fit our needs. We ended up hiring a software developer to build it for us, and we got exactly what we needed and more.
Some businesses will settle for a piece of software or application if it is 70% applicable because there is nothing else out there, and it better than what they have.
But based on your closing statement, some things are just out of our control. This is an example of demand-side economics. The entertainment business thrived during the depression, partly driven by the theatres giving away place settings that people couldn’t afford, now affectionately known as depression-ware, some of which brings a pretty hefty price tag nowadays.
Could today
