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Marketers used more masculine fonts and colors in packaging and hired very masculine spokesmen, explicitly stating that the  product was for men only. It worked. Marketers changed their phrasing to 'zero-calorie' drinks. Pepsi Max stated that it was the 'first diet cola for men'.  Going green is for girls,  but branding can make men eco-friendly " Shoppers who engage in green behaviors are stereotyped by others  as more feminine and also see themselves as more feminine ." Studies show that men are not as environmentally friendly as women. But could men be persuaded to go green? New research indicates the answer is yes — and it’s all about branding. The study "Is Eco-Friendly Unmanly? The Green-Feminine Stereotype and Its Effect on Sustainable Consumption," forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research by James Wilkie, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, provides evidence that shoppers ...

One of the most enjoyable and important parts of starting a new business is creating a “corporate culture”; in other words, an environment in which your employees are able to perform at a peak level with the least supervision while developing new products and services that meet the needs and wants of customers while growing your business. That being said, it’s not always easy to make this happen.   Many if not most businesses are so driven by the day by demands that little thought is given to where the company is going and how it’s going to get there and by what route. For example, innovation is always a hot topic in the business press.   How does a company foster innovation?   The short answer is by creating a corporate culture in which innovation is encouraged and rewarded.   Research shows that people innovation when they are given the freedom to explore those things that interest them based on their internal motivation.   Telling people that they must innova...

I was approached by a father and his teen-aged son while hosting a small business exposition some years ago.  The father asked me who to talk to at the exposition to get the $100,000 his son needed to start a business based on his son's "sure-fire idea."  Far too many prospective entrepreneurs assume this is how you fund a business: Go ask someone for a wad of cash and within a short period of time, we'll be rich. Here is a breakdown on the 22 Known Ways to Finance a start-up . 1.       Take a very sharp pencil to your personal budget and your business start-up and operating budgets. Your primary personal source of financing for your business is yourself.   If you try to get a bank or investment company, or even private investors to underwrite your business, and you haven’t put your own money in, how do you think these people will react?   Working with other people’s money is an accepted business practice -- as long as you are ...

How to Find Good Employees : On my post of February 18th of this year, we talked about the role of managing stupidity in the success of any organization.  "Stupidity Management" refers to the real need of a business to know the difference between routine tasks that must be completed by rote and those tasks that require innovation and fresh thinking.   Every business has a need for discipline in tasks that must be performed the same way, each and every time. Every business has a need to creative thinking and fresh ideas on certain other tasks or problems, just not every task of problem.   The Hunt for the Creative Individual There are certain jobs in every organization where you, the owner, need original thinking.  Or perhaps you're running a business that lives off original thinkers.  An advertising agency is a business where the company's assets walk out the door every day at five (ish). Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School has conducte...

Governance & Management : Science Daily Mar. 25, 2013 — Women's abilities to make fair decisions when competing interests are at stake make them better corporate leaders, researchers have found. A survey of more than 600 board directors showed that women are more likely to consider the rights of others and to take a cooperative approach to decision-making. This approach translates into better performance for their companies. The study, which was published this week in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, was conducted by Chris Bart, professor of strategic management at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, and Gregory McQueen, a McMaster graduate and senior executive associate dean at A.T. Still University's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona. "We've known for some time that companies that have more women on their boards have better results," explains Bart. "Our findings show that having women on the board ...

Scanning through a science report data base, I came across the results of a study that concludes something experienced business owners surely would agree on:  " While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail spectacularly often flourish more in the long run." ". . .failure is a far better teacher." This according to Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School in a study published in the Academy of Management Journal back in 2010.  Working with Peter Madsen, assistant professor at BYU School of Management, Desai found that organizations not only learned more from failure than success, they retained that knowledge longer. "Whenever you have a failure it causes a company to search for solutions and when you search for solutions it puts you as an executive in a different mindset, a more open mindset," said Desai.  Neophyte entrepreneurs ...

Source: onemansblog As long as we’re considering rude behavior, how do we treat customers who are behaving rudely?  You probably have an idea.  You might think that all humans react in the same way to rudeness from a customer.   But according to our friends at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, customer service employees - read waiters, hotel desk clerks, salespeople - born and raised in North America will actively sabotage a customer who is rude to them, while customer service representatives from China withdraw and lose enthusiasm for their jobs. "In North America, employees tend to retaliate against offensive customers -- doing things like giving bad directions or serving cold food ,” says UBC Sauder School of Business Professor Daniel Skarlicki, a co-author of the study.   “ In China, workers are more likely to reduce the general quality of service they provide to all customers -- nasty or nice...