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www.lipstickalley.com Single women with personal wealth more  likely to become entrepreneurs than men ". . . from 2009 to 2014, the proportion of men in self-employment increased by 6 per cent. Over the same period, the proportion  of self-employed females jumped by a remarkable 22 per cent ." A new economic study by the University of Stirling and Royal Holloway, University of London has found evidence that there is a big difference in cash flow problems faced by men and women in the UK. They found single women face more severe constraints to their incomings and outgoings, but that those single women whose personal wealth increases unexpectedly through an inheritance are more likely to start a new business than their male counterparts. It is difficult for an aspiring entrepreneur, or current business owner, to obtain the funds necessary to start a business or expand an existing one. Labour Force Surveys show that from 2009 to 2014, the proportion of men in self-employment inc...

Marketing study shows lenient return policy may increase sales " The study shows that lenient return policies do in fact encourage product purchase ." A meta-analysis of retail return policies led by a University of Texas at Arlington College of Business professor may lead businesses to modify their policies to increase sales and reduce returns.  The study found that return policies that offer consumers more monetary rewards are likely to increase their consumer purchases. Narayanan Janakiraman, an assistant professor of marketing who specializes in consumer behavior, UTA doctoral candidate Holly Syrdal and University of Texas at Dallas doctoral candidate Ryan Freling recently published their conclusions in The Journal of Retailing. "The Effect of Return Policy Leniency on Consumer Purchase and Return Decisions: A Meta-analytic Review" analyzed 22 academic papers concerning return policies. The analysis reviewed five different dimensions: time, money, effort, scope ...

Businesses who put customers and employees first flourish Volumes have been written about successful business, political and historical leaders.  Angelo Mastrangelo, adjunct assistant professor of entrepreneurship and leadership at Binghamton University, dives deeper than any other into the characteristics, behaviors, values and attitudes that make great leaders in his new book " Entrepreneurial Leadership ." "The art of generating new business is selfless, and not selfish … good entrepreneurial leaders focus on the needs and wants of the consumer, knowing that by satisfying the consumer first, the company will benefit later," Mastrangelo said. The book offers a practical guide to being the kind of leader that creates a new business, instead of rehashing an old one. "My model provides the fundamentals of leadership and entrepreneurship. If you're looking for a new business opportunity, ultimately, you need to be looking for a problem that needs to be solved...

Source:  www.fremont.gov We are all creatures of habit, which is good news to owners of any small business.  This may seem instinctive to any business owner, but now this assumption can be considered scientific fact. A comprehensive study of consumers world-wide conducted by the mathmatics department at the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) not only documents this, but has developed a method for predicting people's shopping patterns.  Also participating in this research are scientists at the University of California in San Diego (U.S.A), M.I.T (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and NICTA (Australia).  A pretty impressive group of researchers, indeed. The conclusion of this study is that consumers are more predictable than you might assume and because of this predictability it is possible to know where consumers will shop. As explained by one of its authors, Esteban Moro of the Department of Mathematics at UC3M, " the main conclusion we have ...

Below are five articles reprinted from Science Daily on how keeping your employees happy improves your customer's satisfaction and your business's bottom line.  It's proof of the old business saying, " your employees will treat your customers the way you treat them ."  ~ Jim 1.  To Boost Customer Satisfaction, Pay Attention to Employee Job Satisfaction Science Daily, June 1, 2011 — Previous studies have shown that customer satisfaction plays a key role in the health and future success of any company. When customers are satisfied, they keep coming back to the same store and invite their friends to do the same. Now, a new study from the University of Missouri has found that CEOs who pay attention to employees' job satisfaction are able to boost both customer satisfaction and the number of customers that intend to purchase products from the store. "You might think that as an owner, you only need to pay attention to the customers, providing them with...

Science Daily, Feb. 20, 2013 :   Any manager or business owner will deal with an employee whose performance starts slipping, especially after what others see as a “failure” when performance can just drop like a rock.   Counseling often fails to get the employee back on track.   How to handle this? New research conducted by the University of Exeter in SE England, Amherst College in Massachusetts and the University of Stirling in south central Scotland offers a simple method you can use to help someone.    The research, to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, shows that " while criticism from team members sends individuals into downward performance spirals, external criticism can be a trigger that boosts performance as people try to prove the outsiders wrong ." To paraphrase lead author Dr Tim Rees of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Exeter, “ Careful management of performance following failure by encouraging a 'them and us'...

The headline stopped me cold: A Stupidity-based Theory of Organizations Wow.   Two academics, Mats Alvesson of Lund University in Lund, Sweden, and Andre’ Spicer of City University London, published the results of their in-depth research into “Functional Stupidity” offering a theory of. . .   " Ah, ha, the truth is finally out ,” I chortle with smug glee.   “ All those dolts and troglodyte managers I suffered under those 46 miserable years of wage slavery,   finally, their hockey-puckedness is exposed for the world to see ." Then I read the paper published in the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Management Studies.   Oh.   Well, now.   On second thought I have to accept the authors’ conclusion that Functional Stupidity may be a bad thing but may also be a good thing, an important concept that leads to predictable functioning and efficiency.    So what is Functional Stupidity? It’s quite straight forward, really.   As Alvesson a...

Source:  crasstalk.com I t’s always reassuring when a new bit of research is published that documents something I’ve observed and written or talked about for years.   Case in point:   What I call the “Puppy Love” syndrome.   Now the Harvard Business School has published research documenting this in what the authors call the “IKEA Effect”.   In short, the researchers had subjects assemble origami projects or assemble kits from IKEA.   They documented that most people give their creation a higher grade than even those assembled by professionals.   The message is that people tend to fall in love or have higher opinions of things they have worked on themselves, often ignoring obvious flaws in their creation. This description is from an article I wrote some years ago. *   *   *   *   * The Puppy Love Syndrome               Do you remember the first great love of your life, ...