by david allan van nostrand | Nov 13, 2023 | Americana, Customer Satisfaction
Who Invented the Motel?* In 1908, Henry Ford sold the first Model T. Considered by most to be the first affordable car, it sold for $820 until Ford’s assembly-line efficiency brought the cost down to $260. In 1927, he had sold 5 million of them to middle-class...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 15, 2021 | Case Study, Customer Satisfaction
The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease In the days of stagecoaches, buckboards and covered wagons, crude wooden wheels turned around crude wooden axles, producing lots of friction and heat. To keep the wooden wheels and axles from burning away, they were lubricated by...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 26, 2021 | Customer Satisfaction, Items in the News
For $5, I bought a watermelon at a small upscale Italian bakery/deli near me where I buy just-baked bread every week. When I cut into my watermelon, it was more white than red and was filled with the whitish ropy strings we are used to seeing when we carve pumpkins. I...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 28, 2021 | Customer Satisfaction, Human Behavior, The Myopia of Experts
Salespeople looking to land new accounts call on new restaurants while they are still under construction. Vendors selling such things as office supplies, cleaning supplies, paper products, and condiments flock to these soon-to-be-opening restaurants. When a local...
by david allan van nostrand | Dec 7, 2020 | Customer Satisfaction, How to tell good research from bad
McDonald’s aimed its advertising at parents for many years before someone got the idea to advertise directly to their kids instead. Their notion was that the children would relentlessly pester their parents to take them to McDonald’s for Happy Meals, visits with...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 17, 2020 | Customer Satisfaction, Organizational Behavior, Using Information
The average American generates between four and five pounds of waste each day, which adds up to more than 33 tons in a lifetime. Only one-third of it is recycled. Concerned about these numbers, a municipal government commissioned us to study household recycling. The...
