Game Theory of Black Friday

November 25, 2011 1 Comment

If you’re reading this real-time, you’re probably not out shopping.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is a day of shopping madness, and is sometimes considered the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Most major retailers open extremely early andd offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season.

A few days ago on NYT, Robert H. Frank described Black Friday as a retail race to the bottom in terms of a zero-sum or negative-sum game:

In recent years, large retail chains have been competing to be the first to open their doors on Black Friday. The race is driven by the theory that stores with the earliest start time capture the most buyers and make the most sales. For many years, stores opened at a reasonable hour. Then, some started opening at 5 a.m., prompting complaints from employees about having to go to sleep early on Thanksgiving and miss out on time with their families. But retailers ignored those complaints, because their earlier start time proved so successful in luring customers away from rival outlets.

Tyler Cowen, of MarginalRevolution, has a different opinion.  Based on the fact that early December has in general the cheapest prices of the year, not Black Friday, he says:

Dare I suggest that some people like waiting in those lines with their thermos cups and stale bagels.  You could try to argue they are “forced to do so,” to get the bargains, but in a reasonably competitive world  each outlet will (roughly) try to maximize the consumer surplus from visiting the store, including the experience of waiting in line.

All I know is that a few of my colleagues were more excited to go home for Black Friday than for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

Wondering why Rebecca Black’s face is the photo for this post?  Check out the commercial below.  Read about it here.

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You know what they say about Assumptions …

July 10, 2010 Leave a comment

In the Space Tourism break-out session, Melchor Antuñano showed a clip on the hazards of assumptions.  He showed the first bit of this video – I found the rest online, later.

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Google Yourself

June 16, 2010 Leave a comment

Have you ever Googled yourself?  If so, don’t worry; most American adults have, too.  That is to say, 57% of us have typed our name into one search engine or another in order to find out what exactly is out there about us, according to the Pew Research Center.

While some consider searching for yourself vain, there are a number of good reasons that it’s a good idea to find out what information is out there about you.  To start, if you can search for yourself and find sensitive information, others can, too.  This is a good opportunity to either take that information down yourself, or ask the website host to do it for you.

And, of course, employers search for you.  You want to make sure that what they see is what you want them to see.  If not that, then at least make sure what they see isn’t what you don’t want them to see.  For example, I don’t allow my Facebook profile to show up in public searches, but, when I search for my name on Google, my LinkedIn profile is the top hit.

Not many of us “Google” or “Bing” ourselves on a routine basis.  Only 2 percent of those surveyed said they regularly look up information about themselves.  19 percent responded that they do it “once in a while,” and the remaining 78 percent said they’ve searched for themselves only once or twice.

Another reason it’s a good idea to know what’s out there about you: Almost half of adults, 48 percent, agree that “getting to know new people now is easier and more meaningful,” as they can find out information about others before meeting up.

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Keep it Simple!

March 25, 2010 Leave a comment

At HP, we reach out, touch base, and engage with our coworkers.  We use the word “dead” as a verb — we “dead” our leads, for example.  And, best of all, during the day we are “solutioning” problems for our customers.  Yes, that’s right.  We’re not solving, we are “solutioning” those problems.

Thomas Jefferson said, “When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.”

In the TED talk below, Alan Siegel, a leading authority on branding and business communication, asks why we don’t keep our most important legal documents simple.  Our lives are regulated by complex documents, like tax forms, credit agreements, and even the newly-passed healthcare bill.   They’re filled with words and phrases that don’t make sense to those without a law degree.

Let’s eliminate clutter.  Let’s get rid of the extra words.  In short, let’s simplify.

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The 1000th Mile of Science

February 19, 2010 Leave a comment

Why are there so many problems in the world that we know how to solve, yet somehow we don’t get around to solving them?   Why are people around the world still dying from hunger or preventable diseases when we have scientific knowledge to fix these problems?  What, really, is the hold-up?

In this TED talk, Sendhil Mullainathan discusses the question of why some world problems are still problematic, even when we have the solution.

In short, Mullainathan says we need to stop expecting science alone to fix everything.  He suggests instead an interdisciplinary method, using psychology, marketing, art, behavioral economics, and the scientific method in order to come up with a comprehensive solution, and, ultimately, get results we want.

We live in a society where science rules the roost.  If it’s broken, try science.  If it’s still broken, try more science.  Studies, experiments, and papers are considered the highest form of irrefutable evidence.

“The first 999 miles [of social problem solving] are all about science,” Mullainathan says.  “You know what we do on the last mile? [We say] Oh, this is a good idea.  People will like this.  Let’s put it out there.”  Unfortunately, it’s that last one mile that really matters — the implementation.

However, in this talk, Mullainathan explores the idea that creating a good, scientifically backed solution and putting it out there for the world is only a good start.  Maybe, he suggests, science alone isn’t always going to be quite enough to get the job done.

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