Barbara Kahn Discusses the Retail Revolution (Podcast)

and marketing at the Wharton School of Business. If you are at all intrigued by the impact of not only Amazon on the worlds of retail, but how overbuilt retail is, and why it's inevitable that B and C class malls would would go out, why so many retailers are failing to keep up, failing to compete, why it's inevitable that we're going to see a lot of these retailers go down, and how all these really interesting applications of data, analytics

and technology is completely changing how retailers operate. Uh the experiential aspect of it, the ability need to capture data in stores that previously only existed online is a very very significant change, and the ramifications from that are going to be felt for quite a long while. With no further ado, here is my conversation with Professor Barbara Con. I'm Barry Ritolts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Professor Barbara Con.

She is a professor of marketing and a director of the J. H. Baker Retailing Center at Wharton, part of the University of Pennsylvania. Previously to that, she was dean at the University of Miami Business School. She is the author of The Shopping Revolution, How successful retailers can win customers in an Era of Endless Disruption. Barbara Con Welcome to Bloomberg. Well, thank you very much. It's fun to be here. Uh, it is, and and this is such a fun topic. I really enjoy uh the subject. And

let's just jump right into it. It's a chapter in your book. I have to start with how disruptive is Amazon. It seems like every announcement they make royal is an entire sector of the stock market. Yeah, it's really amazing. Every day something new from Amazon, and every day there's massive reaction and a lot you do see stocks move up and down as Amazon says something or other threatens

to go into health industry, into financial services. People are afraid. Um. And it's interesting because what Amazon does is a disruptor. There's no doubt about it. Um, and they disrupt. One of the most famous Jeff Bezos quotes, which I have never seen actually written down, but everyone on the internet swears. He said, this is your margin is my opportunity, and that idea of taking out margin, in other words, taking out profit is pretty scary and when they can do

in a sustainable way, that's disruption. So let me broaden the conversation. Online retailing isn't even double digit yet, it's not ten, of which Amazon is just under half. Are we getting a little all worked up for five of the market, or is the overall trend what's scaring the Jesus out of everybody? You know, I don't think it's that online per se. I think it's changing the whole shopping experience. People talk about as omni channel, but right

now it's just retail. Retail is now become a seamless integration between online and offline. The the original online retailers are opening up stores. Even on Amazon is opening up stores, which is kind of mind boggling that they're opening up bookstores. You know, well, it's been so successful for Apple. Are some of the other technology companies trying to imitate that? You see that? Also Microsoft, and you know, I mean Sony, which is electronic they're opening up a direct store for them.

But when they open up these new stores, they're different from old stores. They're not the same thing at all. They're much more concentrated on customer experience. Some of the new stores that open up a showrooms, they don't even carry inventory per se. And that's part of the point. You really can't say what's the percentage of shopping online anymore because some people will shop online pick up in the store. Then where do you where do you code that you know what what is that is that online

shopping or offline shopping? So I've experienced that with both Home Depot and Lows. You want something specific, they may not have this particular snowblower, but you can buy it online. They're shipping stuff to the store anyway you pick it up there. There's no additional shipping cost. Yet you feel like you're actually making it as friction free as the usual online shopping. Is that what's meant by omni channel is everything to everybody. Omni channel is thinking about not

dividing up whether it's online or offline. It's all one big channel, and that's going to become not a real word anymore, and we're just going to think of this as retail you know, when you buy retail, you can go online, you can go in the store, you can pick up there, you can buy there, whatever, shop it on your phone. So I've noticed at stores like my wife calls is a retail therapy, but it's stores like

Macy's or Lord and Taylor. If you're looking at something in a salesperson, some of these stores still have sales assistance. If you're looking at something and they don't have it in the color, size, whatever you like, they're very quick to say, we can order it now and have it shipped to your home for free. Would you like to do that? And if it's something you're familiar with the size, it's like, yeah, sure, it's one less package I have. They don't want to let any transaction slip away without

converting it to an actual sale. Has that been your experience, Oh for sure that's the case. So there's not all the traditional retailers are doing that now. So this is

a purposeful approach, not just one savvy sales person. Yeah, you know, but I wonder when you tell that story, one of the things that's interesting to me about is whether that salesperson's on commits or not, because and that's what I think is interesting about say, what I consider a very creative retailer like Sephora, where the salespeople are

not on commission. And the reason I bring up this point here is when you say I'll send it to your store, send it to your home, is she really trying to she or he the sales associate, really trying to give something of value to you, which is the way you told the story, or were they trying to upsell so they make a commission. And that's a subtle difference,

but I think it's an important difference. Well, if you walk in to a store and you find something you like and I'm looking at three Let's say we're looking at shirts and there are three different colors and extra small up to double XL and I want this color and the size and they don't have it. It's not so much an upsell as a lost opportunity, right, And that that's how I took it. Okay, in that case,

it's positive. But but I want to make that point because I think this idea retailer that retailers had in the past of doing whatever they can to make the next sale backfired when Amazon came in, Because I think what Amazon is trying to do is really make the customer experience easier, you know, and they make you so you can get in and out of the website very quickly. When Amazon famous for is they patented in one click shopping at the and I when I found out that

that was patented, that was shocking to me. It's like, why would that be patentable? And then you have to go back to think what was the way retailers thought and what they used to think when you're online is keep people online as long as possible. They would talk about web strategies where you have a landing page and if it's designed right, you go further and further into the website with the idea the longer people are on the website, the more they're likely to buy a store. Right.

And that's why I was saying with the salesperson too, if it's a function of just trying to make sure you make a sale, like you said, anything I can do to make a sale, that's not what Amazon does. Amazon said, let's make it as easy as possible for you. And that was the first time people really tried to do that, and that's why they could patent one click shopping so going back to your example, the way you

told the story, it was easier, it was better. But you could also imagine an alternative scenario where people are saying, I don't want you to walk out of the store without making a purchase, and they start doing a harder and harder sell. That's not really customer focused anymore. That's, you know, sales focused. Quite fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about retail and specifically, I have to discuss the con retailing success matrix. Tell us about those four quadrants

and what they mean. Yeah, well, I mean I did name it that, but I think it's interesting. That's what that name is. Something I could think of nothing else. But anyway, the idea behind the success matrix is when when I um I recently stepped down as director of the J. H. Baker Retailing Center. I had been there.

I had been the director for the last six and a half seven years, and during that time I ran into a lot of changes in the retail industry and being an academic, when I stepped down, I wanted to take a deep breath and try to organize everything into some kind of framework, and so I went back and looked at traditional retailing matrices, and they focused on the product, and they focused on operations or logistics if you want.

And that was it. And if you want to talk with this about someone is a great retailer, let's say Mickey Drexler. He was called the merchant prince. But that meant he knew how to merchandise, he knew how to assort product, he had a good eye. And nowhere in any of these traditional retail matrices was the customer. As a marketing professor, the first principle of marketing is the principle of customer value. And what does customer value mean

in retailing? Give them a product they value from a retailer that they trust, that idea of retailer that they trust. That was missing. The second principle of marketing, which was not in any of these traditional retailing matrices, was the principle of competitive advantage. If you're in a very a competitive market, you've got to be better than the competition. That means either increased pleasure or take away pain. So those two ideas form the underlying theory of the matrix.

The columns are the principle of customer value, product benefits, or customer experience the rows are the principle of differential advantage. Do it better by increasing pleasure or do it better by removing pain? And that gives me the two by two matrix that I call my so I I broke it down in your book, which let me um, is called the shopping revolution. Brands, experiential friction, lists, and low costs.

So each of those things either make it more fun or less painful, or what's the sect or focused on making the product more fun or less painful, or focusing on making the customer experience more fun or less painful. And what's really new in the matrix is that second column of customer experience and what Amazon redesigned, in my opinion, is making the customer experience frictionless easy. That's interesting. How

much of this is driven by this millennial generation? And I guess I was going to ask a dumb question, which is how much of it is technology? But how do you really peel apart millennials and technology and second nature to them? So the let me rephrase that question. The combination of millennial preferences and the very use of technology. Is that what's driving a lot of this? Yeah, I think it is, actually because when Amazon started, they started online,

you know, and they started with books. And you have to think back, why did they start with books? And I would argue they started with books because the product and the shopping experience could be completely digitized. Once it can be completely digitized, then what they did is have an endless assortment. So they had more assortment than any physical store, and they reduced prices by ten to That

was a dominance Lucien and attracted customers. But you're right, it started with technology, but the basic idea of removing pain from a customer experience does not have to be technology. Because think of what Walmart's doing now curbside pick up. They could have done that a long time ago and

made shopping easier, but they didn't. They made you come into the store, walk up and down the aisles, stay in the store as much as possible, impulse shop, you know, all the ideas, put the milk in the back, All of that was to keep you in the store as long as possible. This new idea of you're a very busy person and you don't want to spend your whole time, the whole day in a Walmart, so you should be able to pick it up as you drive home. That's

a new idea, but that's not technology. Coincidentally, we're having this conversation the day after a New York Times column front page New York Times column came out discussing some of your work, amongst other things, how Amazon has affected retail and how retailers have finally began to learn from their experiences with Amazon. How far along in that process are we that retailers are finally waking up and saying, hey, we better do this and this, or Amazon is gonna

eat our launch. Yeah, I mean, I think they're seeing the retail apocalypse. People are talking about that. If you don't understand these two basic principles, the principle of customer value and the principle of differential advantage, you're not going to succeed radio shack, circuit city borders. You know, it's soon Sears and Khmard who knows. But these retailers that are not really up to snoff on customer experience, they just can't make it in a world that has an

Amazon in it. Sears, I think that has to be inevitable going that way. The local Sears and New where I grew up has been there forever and finally it's succumb And yet how are shops like best Buy and Target seemingly thriving. Target just announced their best quarter. I

think in something like there was a game. What is the drivers of the successful companies like best Buy, Target, and Home Deeple and Lows for that matter, versus the sears and the circuit city targets are very interesting example because it shows the importance of stores and this quote unquote omni channel experience. So one of the things they've done that's very successful is opened up the small urban stores.

So they used to have these big boxes in suburbia and rural markets, right, but now they have these small urban stores where singles are, young people are living in the city's more. They also opened them close to campuses, and they're getting a lot of people who like to have the physical store experience. They've been They've been tinkering with their product assortment. They've come up with a lot new store brands. They're trying to get the cachet of tar J back, you know, that design kind of idea

of fun shopping, and it seems to be working. They've been doing a lot of things. The biggest thing is changing that store having a different assortment and it requires rethinking your assortment when the store gets smaller. And then these ideas of curbside pick up and making shopping easier and making shopping fun. So how do firms differentiate on brands? Well, you know, the luxury brands are still doing very well. So you're looking at Louis Vatan air Mas, those those

are really doing very well. They're staying off of Amazon, but they understand the importance of online. Also, they're partnering with things like far Fetched or Netta Porte, which are some kinds of online marketplaces that are dealing. But they understand if they're going to charge those premium prices, they've got to give superior product, pleasurable product, and a really good customer experience. You have to feel pampered when you buy luxury, so that's another piece of it. So what's

the flips? Are the everyday low prices the e d LP How important is that is at a totally different market segment or is there any overlap? Well, you know, that's interesting thing because I think somebody might have a Louis Vatan purse and then a Target T shirt. You know that that's possible, but there's always going to be

a price sensitive segments. So Everyday low Price, the Walmart strategy, Costco strategy, TJ Max, they're all doing very well, even though the luxury brands are doing well too, because they're going after being the best at something. So luxury is the best at product, and everyday low price is the lowest price. And it seems that it's a bit of a barbell the middle where the middle class used to shop,

that's become a bit of a void. It's either high end or lower right, Yeah, it's yeah, something special, And that's what I mean by differential advantage. You've got to be better. You can't just be good enough. You've got to be better at something. Let's talk a little bit about your academic career. What motivated you to write a

book on on the Shopping Revolution? Well, I mean for the last seven years or six and a half years, I was the director of the Baker Retailing Center at Wharton, and the goal of that retailing center was actually to convince Wharton students to go into retailing. Typically, the Wharton students didn't go into retailing. They went into vestment banking

or hedge funds or consulting. But Jay Baker, who had retired as the president of Coles, thought this was a missed opportunity, and so he developed the center to encourage people to think about retailing. And I was the director of it, and so my goal was to really learn as much as I could about retail and what the excitement was, to try to convince our students to go into the industry. At the time I was doing this,

retailing was changing radically. You know. We had all sorts, not only Amazon, but these digitally native vertical brands started. Those are the digitally native vertical brands of brands that start online and they go direct to the end user. Warby Parker was started for Wharton students, so that was particularly sense, you know, something we were very proud of.

But there's also Casper that did it. More recent Mattress Company, Yeah, the mattress company Bnobos which was subsequently bought by Walmart. Um All Birds is a new one that's getting a lot of your wearing over. But these are digitally native vertical brands that are going out and this Nate this We were trying to make retail sexy, but retail was becoming sexy, you know. It was really the technology referenced before really did change the way people think about retailing.

So so when a student graduates Wharton and goes into retail, what aspect of this are they doing? There's it seems there's a universe of things that makes sense and are applicable in a modern technology world. Where do you see them going into? Well, you know, Amazon right now, it's big a hire of Warton students, as Goldman was really, so you know, we're not talking warehouse workers. These are people who knows what they're I think they're working for

AWS or whatever else. I don't know what they're were. But Amazon is a huge company, right right, they'll eclipse Walmart as the biggest employer if things continue, if you extrapolate that to infinitely, which is never a good you know, even some of our students are going to Walmart now, which was you know, it was in the past. They weren't so intrigued with going to Arkansas, you know, and working in like you said, and operate actionally efficient company.

But now Walmart dot com is in San Francisco. Jet dot Com isn't there, yea, So now it's a sexy, interesting, fun place to work. So do you recall there was, I want to say, a New York Times story. You just made me think of this um where someone came into Target to complain that their daughter was getting pregnancy stuff in the mail. She's in high school? How dare you?

And then subsequently he had to go back and apologize Targets Big data analytics figured out that if you buy this, this and this, hey, you're probably pregnant and you're gonna want this. Is that the sort of stuff that that NBA students are doing. Yeah, that's one thing for sure. The Wharton School, Ardine is advocating over and over and over again data analytics, data analytics. You really can't go into marketing anymore if you didn't understand customer analytics and

data analytics. You know in that story I remember when it came out maybe five years ago. Was surprising, but you know, you really didn't need data analytics to do that. A smart salesperson could have watched this girl come into the store via pregnancy test and by you know, vitamins and prenatal vitamins or all these other things and what it really wasn't rocket science to figure that out. So given your vantage point, how has the curriculum for NBA

students changed relative to to this industry. Yeah, we've definitely included more analytics in our marketing in everything um Adam Grant is another professor at the Wharton School. He started people analytics generals, yeah, or givers and takers and planed B and M. He but he's really you know, all of that stuff. It's even management, which maybe used to think of management and marketing is quote unquote softer sciences, were all using data analytics. Of course, finance has always

been dated heavily data driven. You'd be surprised that's a relatively recent phenomenal. By relatively recent, it's a couple of decades. It was not as endemic as you would suppose any forty six years ago. That's interesting, quite fascinating stuff. Let's talk a little bit about some of the older brands who may not be quite as hip as um the Warby Parker's or the old birds of the world. How would you advise companies like Kellogg's or Coca Cola to

appeal to the next generation. You know, it's really interesting to watch because I've been teaching marketing for a long time, and we would teach branding, and we would talk about what are the biggest brands forever the same biggest brands Coke, IBM, whatever, Toyota. All of a sudden, the last five years, we all know who the biggest brands are, right I mean, And that's a change that happened very very quickly in the last five years. And if you look at their stock prices, Kellogg's, Gillette,

they're hurting. The CpG companies are hurting, and they do have to do something to wake up and smell the roses, just like the retailers. So Gillette, for example, has you know, started subscription services to compete with Dollar Shave Club and Harry's. Coca Cola just bought a coffee company. Look what Nike is doing. That's pretty interesting. So let's let's discuss that because I was just reaching from my phone to grab a data point that I wanted to ask you you're here.

The day after it was announced that Colin Kaepernick is going to be UH, he received an extension of his contract with Nike, and on the thirty year anniversary of their launch of the Just Do It campaign, they made um they made him part of that. And there seems to be quite an interesting backlash. However, and and this is what's so fascinating. A data point I read I might have been the Journal of the Times specifically said something like two thirds of Nike's customers are under thirty five.

So there, you know, Nike is not marketing to old, fat, white conservative dudes. That's not their target demographic. Is it? The people who are burning Nike socks and shoes? They really don't care about that, do that? No? I mean, I think that's the calculated decision they made. And they had to do some things because they also had been getting a lot of negative publicity on the women issue.

I mean, they support Serena and she's a fantastic role model, but that's not that's not where the news is about Nike and women. That the lawsuits and all these other things, and that's been a news and Nike has to face that. Um. And I think you asked me before about the difference in millennials and baby boomers. One of the things I see that's different is that millennial millennials seemed to hold brands accountable, and so it's not just enough to brand

a product. You kind of have to take some positions. You have to be responsible, and I think Nike, you know, is taking that position. Now. They're standing up to social issues that do concern their core market, and they took a stand on it. Look what happened at Starbucks, you know, one incidents in one Starbucks restaurant in Philadelphia caused an incredible reaction around the world. That was something I was talking to someone in You're a bit better than I said.

I don't suppose you heard about what happened in Philadelphia with Starbucks and they had it was you know, it's always amazing when you have such a diffuse company with tens of thousands of stores, how hard that is to um really get a consistent message in a consistent behavior across tens of thousands of employees. It's uh, it's really quite astonishing, all right. So here's the Times article. It's not the journal. Nike returns to a familiar strategy with

the Kaepernack ad campaign. The Time suggested that Nike as a brand has courted controversy. Charles Barkley, I'm not a role model, Tiger Wood saying, Hey, some of these uh golf courses wouldn't let me play because I'm an African American years ago. So coming back to Colin Kaepernack, is this just tacking into that controversy. Here's the data point I wanted to find. Nearly two thirds of individuals who wear Nike in the United States are under thirty five

years old. So so this wasn't a coincidence. This was a very conscious Oh, they had to know that they get I mean, Trump made it clear they were going to get some backlash on this, and he, true to form, responded um yesterday, though not as extremely as one might

have thought, but he did respond um. And and that then the boycott Nike kind of hashtag boycott Nike, and the crazy videos that are coming up with people burning their expensive shoes, which is kind of silly because a, you already gave them your money and be really shouldn't if you really think it's a veterans issue, then donated to Veterans group. By the way, yesterday, I'm doing this from my memory, so I'm going to get the numbers wrong.

But it was something like Nike stock fell two point seven percent, but Adiita stock felt two point It was almost no difference that if their biggest rival felt the same amount, it might have just been uh, you know, the whole segment is going to suffer backlash for a couple of days and then back to back to usual. But when you take some of these positions, you're gonna get polarization. And they must have calculated, um, you know, we'll lose some but will gain loyalty in other markets,

and they thought it was worth it. So let's talk a little bit about the paradox of luxury. You you referenced it earlier. People have to either have some very positive affiliation with the products, or the brands or the experience. What is the paradox of luxury. Well, you know, usually in economics, which I'm sure you know very well, supply and demand says you lower price, make things more accessible than your market share is going to go up. In luxury,

that's the paradox. If you lower brands too much, like Michael Core's a lower price too much like Michael Cores and Coach did inadvertently by having a lot of discounting and selling a lot of their products and out, that diminishes the value of the brand. So if the and if you make it too accessible, it diminishes the value of a luxury brand. Luxury is for elite luxury. Special luxury is inaccessible. So when you make it a little bit more affordable, of the notion of affordable luxuries almost

an oxymoron. That's the paradox of luxury doesn't follow the regular rules of supply and so this goes back to the old days of general motors when they would sell essentially the same car. The high end was a Cadillac, the middle was a Buick, and the cheap car was a Chevy. They were all essentially rebadged and and up um scaled versions of each other. Is that the concept? Yeah, I mean, so maybe the guts of the car was similar,

but the trappings or that we're really different. And the dealerships were dealing right, and the service was different, the brand was different, that materials in the car might have been different higher value. So there was I'm not saying it was silly. I think there was value to what going on. But that's the paradox of luxury, and part of what makes it special. It is not everybody has it, so it's the scarcity creates creates a specific value that

that's kind of that's kind of interesting. So within the existing world of brands that are being disrupted. How can they jiu jitsu this? How can the disrupted become the disruptive? Well, that's interesting to think of. You know, you're seeing a lot of pressure on these digitally native vertical brands. They're they're considered some of the disruptors. A lot of what they have done by going direct without all these intermediary channels,

they've been able to lower the price. And so a Warby Parker is a very high designed glass, but it's glasses, but it's sold at nine rather than a five hundred dollars. So that's part of what the disruption is. It goes back to that notion of your margin is my opportunity. So I'm giving you what you really want, but I'm charging a lower price. So that's one way that they've been disrupting. And the other way the disruptions have been

is making it more convenient. Um. I suppose there's something lurking out there that we haven't seen yet, but right now that's what people are doing. Um. I can't imagine what it will be. But maybe there's another dimension in my matrix I haven't thought about yet. So so you you said you can't imagine what what they'll do next. How challenging is it to predict trends or even just extrapolate trends. It seems that there's a new meme and

a hot new flavor every other day. Are these things just passing fancies or is there really a bigger shift taking place in a lack of consistency and brands over time? I mean what I think what you're talking about is the way retail changed over time and got people to buy more, which was changed style, change trends. So in the old days, heym's went up and down or colors arc, wasn't it? That was what a long arc of time.

It didn't change see from day to day, would change season and season to season, but it gave you a reason to buy more. Same thing with electronics or innovations or cars. The technology just got better and better, and so you needed so that you do need to see something new in order to get people to buy because products just don't wear out that fast. You know, if they wore out that then you'd have to replace. But a lot of things don't, so you need fashion style,

new technology. What Amazon did and the digitally native vertical brands did was I do think significant disruption which is different than this changing in styles and trends. And they realized that the whole model of retail had gotten stale um. And that's when I went back to that salesforce commission kind of idea, the idea that if you would go into a department store and try to run away from

the perfume women, you know that we're going to surray you. Like, what were they thinking, You know, they were thinking that these are commissioned people who are going to do anything to So let's talk about that. We we've been other folks have been discussing the death of the mall for years and years and years. Is that overblown or has that sort of post war suburban shopping experience. Is that also circling the draink Yeah? No, I think that that's

what's happened, Like it got stale. So we have way too many stores in the US. We're over called, overstored, overbuilt, like a substantial amount versus Japan and the UK even Yeah, right, substantial. So even if you didn't see all this change, those stores were gonna have to go out of business. We had too many, and if you look at the malls that are going out of business, they're called the B and C malls. They were terrible malls. You know when the Macy closed down is that as the destination. All

those stores in the middle had to go out. There was no traffic. So that's what's going down. But just as those stores malls are going down, some exciting, beautiful new flagship malls are being built. Look what's happening in New York City. There's some beautiful stores being built that should attract a lot of traffic. Can you stick around a little bit? I have a ton more questions. Okay, we have been speaking to professor Barbara on she teaches

marketing at Wharton. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and come back for the podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things retail. You can find that at iTunes, Overcast, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Bloomberg or wherever final podcasts are sold. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com. You could follow me on Twitter at

rid Holts. I'm Barry Riholts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Barbara, Thank you so much for doing this. I find this subject absolutely fascinating. And I have a bunch of of sans too that we didn't get to. Um. But I have to come back to the luxury as a scarce good um.

And I'll share a quick funny story with you. My wife teaches fashion illustration and design, so when I get dragged around to various stores, it's not so much retail therapy as it is research and and where I am the reckless, Oh that's nice, get one of those. Um. She is the much more fiscally prudent of the two of us. And one day we're I forgot where we were, but she sees this product bag and it's ungodly expensive.

It's this leather fringe bag. I want to say, it was like twelve or fourteen thousand, some insane insane number that I gasped. I'm like, you know, you could buy a small car for the cost of that that bay and um, And speaking of cars, I troll around eBay all the time looking at old cars to occasionally, um tickle my fancy. And on a lark, I started searching for that bag and one day there it is. It's

less than a thousand dollars. It's which to me is still a ridiculous price for bags, but you walk into the store and hundred is pretty typical. So for her birthday, I surprised her with an eBay purchased product, ungodly expensive bag. What does the used market due to luxury? And what do things like you mentioned Netta Porta and some of the Cpretta Porta, what is Netta Porte? And far fetch? Okay? So they sell rents repurpose, well, they do both, some

of them on marketplaces. Some of them have their own inventories. Some of them concatenate a lot of little stores on their platform. They're different models there. But luxury is a really interesting business. There's catches on it. One of them is this whole counterfeit market. Oh for sure. That was the concern with eBay. I actually had to write the person and say, listen, I'm interested in this bag, how do I know it's real? And they sent me a

thing back here. I've sold ten thousand items. I've been on eBay for whatever a decade. I have all the paperwork with this, and and so my wife's I I When I gave it to her, I said, and make sure this is real. And she looked at and she goes, if this is fake, it's a fantastic alright. Was she happy? Thrilled to death? Can I tell you? She at we The reason I even remembered this is she just said to me, well, falls coming up, and I'm excited about that.

And I'm like, why Jean sweater. She's like, no, I get to take the product bag out of the closet. It's it's a leather fringe bag, so it's her fall bag. Very she's very excited about it. But that's a real big problem. Like it's a big problem, particularly in China where a lot of these things are manufactured, and some of the luxury products would be the branded products would be done during the day and after hours on the same manufacturing, some of the counterfeits would be dead. So

what is the difference between counterfeits? So in that case, the counterfeit and the real product was actually the product was the same. The branch wasn't authorized, it wasn't didn't have the paperwork, the certificates and things, so they were bringing in they were using the same materials in some now those counterfeits are expensive. There's different levels of counterfeits. Want a good, counterfeits want cheap. The very best counterfeits are actually quite good. Um. But you have to know

what you're doing. You have to have the eye to see the difference. Is some of the counterfeits are terrible. But that's a real There's been pressure now on Ali Baba, on and on Amazon because they hadn't been policing whether resellers and third parties sellers were selling real products or counterfeits are all of that, and so luxury products never wanted to go on those platforms unless they could be

assured that there were no counterfeits. So if you if you go down to Chinatown, you could buy a nice Rolex watch for about fifty bucks. The problem is it's Rolex with two ls other Other than that, it's hard to tell the difference. That some of the fakes are pretty spectac Yeah. I mean in Rolex, I doubt it's real gold if it's for sure, um. So, so that's the issue with with um luxury. I it's really fascinating. I know in China they've had fake Apple stores and

all sorts of stuff. What was has there been a resolution with eBay or Amazon or is this still an on way is ongoing, but I think that they are. Amazon has now acknowledged that they're going to have to control their counterfeit issue or they're not going to get the luxury brands to come on. But you know, we're

talking about luxury. Was interesting this notion that accessibility makes luxury less desirable because, as you said, scarcity or exclusivity is what luxury is, and yet people still want to buy online. Now online makes it more accessible, So that's another paradox. Luxury had to figure out, how can I have the luxury experience and still have the convenience of online. And they've been doing all sorts of experimenting with how to keep the convenience of online but keep the exclusivity

of luxury. So for example, they'll have specialized buyers or personalized buyers where you can talk to them online and do the business online, but it's still a one to one luxury experience like a personal shop, personal shop or something like that. And so they've been trying to do things and then when they ship you the product, the packaging is beautiful. You know, some of the luxury comes in the packaging that goes around the product. Have you

been reading about these unboxing videos on YouTube? So I just saw this this weekend. Apparently there's a little bit of a dopamine hit if you watch a video of someone unwrapping a delivery, whether it's an Amazon box or something else, they unwrapid the unpacking and it's like right now and off the shop. I've gone through that experience. I don't know how much I really buy into that UM, but it's fascinating. But what what I do recall reading

about UM earlier. Uh, to your point about the experience, if you go into Tiffany's and for whatever reason, they think you're a high roller type shopper, you get brought up into the special, secret private room that the public doesn't get to see, and it's apparently a very different and much more expensive experience. Tiffany's is an interesting example. They're coming back up. Tiffany some people say is the

only true American luxury brand. It started and I think the same year Airmez started, so it's been around for long enough. Luxury really has to have history, it has to have legacy to be a real luxury brand, and Tiffany's really the only American brand that can claim that credit.

But they kind of lost their way maybe thirty years ago when they had too much silver in their store and they had all these young adolescent teenage girls coming into the store right next to these very rich people buying diamonds in private rooms, and that was not a good juxtamosition. Yeah, that's what should have been online, the silver. Yeah, right, so now they have they still sell some silver, but it's a a small part of it. And they've really

tried to re up the luxury vision of Tiffany's. Make it. You know what Audrey Hepburn saw in it. Nothing can go bad in the Tiffany's store, you know. So that's an interesting point that Tiffany's might be the only luxury store. I'm thinking of things like Ralph Lauren. But they make everything from the low end to the Purple label, which is crazy expensive, um and whatever you can find a name and Marcus. But I assume half that stuff is

coming from Europe. So the traditional luxury brands are French and Italian. You know, that's where you made in Italy. You know, Gucci's off the charts right now. Gucci is crazy doing crazy well, Louis buiton MS. Those are French brands, you know, some of those um But Ralph Lauren had this what I call a branded house strategy, which is what you described under the same brand name from Purple Label or Collection all the way down to outlet. You

could tell it was all Ralph or Paolo. Whereas the luxury houses in Europe a house of brands, and each house is a special brand. They don't have one brand name over all of their different offerings. So when you look at Coach, which I recall back in the day, at one point Coach was pretty high end. I don't know if that's the case. We were talking about Professor Scott Galloway, an n y U Stern. He's made the claim that Apple is the first technology luxury brands. I

agree that you do. It's kind of when you look at their prices, they're certainly premium, and they're counterfeited also, just the way luxury is, which almost a badge of honor to be counterfeited. You know, nobody is counterfeiting Android, so so, but you know Coach that you mentioned that was an American brand, but they're now starting to copy

the European strategy. So they changed their name to the holding company Tapestry, and now they have a house of brands, So they have Coach, they have Stuart white Smith, they have Kate Spade, all under the house Tapestry, and so they're moving and they're trying to take back the too much outlet selling and trying to resurrect the grandeur that Coach used to have. And they're doing well. Their stock prices went up, their their sales are going up. They're

doing very well with that strategy. My wife taught me a shocking data point way back when the stuff you've seen in the outlet centers, that's not the same stuff that you can get in the stores, although occasionally there are um leftovers and end runs and they do get dumped there, but a lot of stores specifically manufacturer for the outlet right, which that was what Coach did wrong. See,

but your wife said, is the right strategy. You want to you have to keep it separate because why would anybody pay full price if you get the same product in an outlet. But Coach had some of the same product in their outlets, and what that did was under undermine the value of the brand. If you're paying a high price, and someone else got the same product, the exact same product, at an outlet price. Why would you

want to pay the higher price? And and and Coach was hurt by that, so let me push back on that. I notice I'm wearing Brooks Brothers. Is probably the wrong example. This is a Brooks brother shirt. But I noticed that a lot of products, the same exact products are sold at multiple times at different prices. So I could walk into a Lord and Taylor. So we're recording this in September. All the new full stuff has already been out for

a month. If I want shopping last month for full stuff, it's full price, it's not discount that, it's not coupons, it's not on sale. And then by the time I don't know, November rolls around, the coupons start, and then as we get closer to Christmas, the big discount start, and then by the time we hit January, the same product you could pay buy a shirt for a hundred and twenty five dollars sixty dollars. Now, you may not get the right color, you may not get the right size,

you may not get exactly what you want. But if your price sensitive, there seems to be a range. You can buy the same product across six months at all these crazy different price points. That is that a purposeful strategy. When started, it made sense, you know, because you would target people at different willingness to pay, and so you get the people are willing to pay at the beginning of season to pay high. People who couldn't afford it or didn't want to would wait till the end of

season and pay low. Unfortunately, people got addicted to those price promotions. They could predict those pressure promotions, and consequently they were very reluctant to pay full price, and it got really bad around holiday seasons where it's big, you know, that's the big bonanza for retail, where it said if you waited long enough, you know you're going to get the discount or Black Friday and all these other things. People got addicted to the discounts and that was very bad.

Undermine the value of the branded It is what hurt Michael Cores for a while. Michael course has pulled back on that so they can be seen as more luxury now um And part of the reason for it was the price sensitivity or price discrimination. Another reason was if

they didn't forecast demand correctly. And it's hard to forecast demand for a fashion product because you don't know what the consumers are gonna like or not like, So you over order certain things and then you've got extra inventory that you've got a discount at the end of the season. And you're doing that years in advance. It's not like thirteen months in advance typically crazy. So that's now that's changed. And this is another thing that's not just Amazon has

done that. Zarah has changed this a lot. Zarah has changed. They do like not a lot of turnovers in the store. They don't have this eighteen month lead time or anything like that, and there's all this pressure. The part of the disruption is to give customers a better experience, so they have to be better at forecasting demand. They have to get the right product in the store so they

don't have leftover inventory at the end. Because what the process you described, you could see, you know, long term, it's not gonna work. People understand it that, you know, everybody knows that happens. Why wouldn't they wait for the discount price, especially given I would make an argument that there hasn't been a whole lot of wage growth in the real wage growth after inflation from the middle class over the past twenty or thirty years. That has to

have an impact on the selling strategies of retailers. Yeah, I agree, but that's what you're saying, Like with all with Macy's and stuff, when you talk about whether their new strategy they're announcing, one of them is much more meticulous forecasting a product assortment, having a better idea before you put you know, excess inventory in the store. And is that just big data? I mean, I would imagine that if they they don't just get to turn a

dial and say, okay, now we're better forecasters. Couldn't they have been a better forecaster five or ten years ago. Computer technology has improved, but not so much over a decade. That is it the algorithms? Is it just? It's also the changing the system so you can see what sells and reproducing faster, you know that business intelligence that well, that's the data, but also the operations like don't order things, see what's selling and then order it um rather than

and the other thing that Zara did. They also were customer focused, where the design luxury houses a product focus. So the luxury housers say, I'm the designer, this is what you like, Zara says, is I'm gonna look and see what the customers like, and then I'm gonna put

what the fashionista is like in my store. So they have their sales associates at the end of every single day report back to headquarters what they've observed, their customers are coming and wearing, what they've observed their customers asked for, and they use that customer data in addition to what the fashion houses are doing to try to better predict what customers are gonna like or what they're not gonna like.

How unique is that what Zara is, Well, Zara was one of the first ones to do it, and then they do a very good job and they're doing very very well. But again this gets back to like this shouldn't have been rocket science, that you should that you should ask the customers what they actually like before you just load up on inventory in your store, you know, But that just didn't happen until recently. But what about I'm no, I'm gonna mangle this term. What about the

knockoffs and the fast fashion? How significant is that too? Well, I mean, Zara sometimes called called fast fashion, but it's a higher, a little bit higher price point fashion. But that is the idea instead of, like you said, waiting the eighteen months for luxury to come in, let's get people now want to buy in season. That's a very big difference in season. Yeah, so like if it's fall, I want to buy fall now? Where they the luxury houses were treating teaching you to buy fall? You know

before it was right? Who wants to go shopping in July and August for a winter coat? It makes no sense? Can see what I mean? It's like that should have been obvious to people, but they looked at it from the product and operations side. I mean, obviously there was a logic to doing it. Getting You have to manufacturer, you have to get the supply, you have to do all these things. It took a long time to get the product to the store. But guess what, Zara figured out how to do it in a way that took

a lot less time. I will admit to once so I had this disan ski coat for years and I made the mistake of buying a light colored coat, which is a terrible idea in New York City, it just gets filthy. And I tried on this black and sort of neon yellow one and Dessaunt is an exorbitant French luxury brand or wherever it comes from, and I couldn't

pull the trigger on it was too expensive. That September, I just happened to stop into a ski shop that at a giant preseason sale and literally found the same exact code for thirty off for a third of what I would have paid last year. And I couldn't couldn't resist that. But that said, really, how how did we ever get trained to buy winter clothes in August? It doesn't make any sense now, and that now that customers

pushing back, that's again what the millennials are doing. One of our young designers, Rebecca Minkoff, which is she's considered a millennial designer. She was one of the ones on that New York Fashion Week saying, you know, I'm going to start showing during fashion week what people want to buy now? Um, and that was considered revolution right, It makes it makes so much sense. What else is you have a bird's eye view of what's going on in in retail and fashion and related areas. What do you

think is really interesting? What is something that you're kind of intrigued about these days. Well, one of the things I think is interesting is how important in store tech is. I think that, yeah, you know, like the beacons in there, or the smart boards and the magic mirrors mirror mentioned

Rebecca Minkoff, she does that in her own stores. If you go to the Soho store, you'll see it, which is where all the items in the store are coated with r F I D code And when you walk into the dressing room, on the mirror in front of you, they show the items you're bringing into the kids in the dressing room. It's right there on the mirror. And then if you want a different size, you can push on the mirror and the sales different size. They'll also

give you suggestions. If you bring in a you know, a pencil black skirt, they'll say this blousse will go with it, this person go with it. All of that makes me perfect sense. How has no one ever thought about? Now? The thing about that that's interesting is it makes perfect sense and apparently has increased sales. You know, it is expensive, but apparently the upsale up cell has worked very well on that. But more importantly is collecting the data online.

If you go online and you put something into your car and you don't buy it, you know, you get all these ads for the next two months, right, because they figure if you went all the way through what's called the purchase funnel to put something in your car, you must have really liked it and maybe we can get the price tweaked right, or maybe and we'll get you to buy. So they'd spent a lot of time

on that last miles. So to speak up the car. Well, in the physical store, if you went to the trouble of bringing something into the dressing room, you must have liked it. And then if you didn't buy it, why did you not buy it? What was wrong with those items? That data was never collected in a physical store. Now that we're taking this into the dressing room, I can see what you bring into the dressing room and what you purchase or what you don't purchase, and that's very

useful information. So now you're capturing all the data that you previously were to disadvantage versus online retailers. Right. How you can do that in this and what are they actually using that data for? Is it productive for them? Yeah? You can figure out like why is this item not selling? Maybe it's not sized right, maybe it's too much money for this. You know, you can figure out reasons why people are choosing not to sell. I mean, so one of the things that things aren't making it into the

dressing room. Maybe they don't look good on the rack, maybe they're in the wrong place in the store. All of a sudden, you can fine tune your merchandise to be what customers want. You're getting customer input right there at the store, which they didn't used to get that. That's quite fascinating. So I know I only have you for a finite amount of time. Let's jump to my favorite questions that I ask all of my guests. Tell us the most important thing that your students don't know

about you. Well, I don't know if my students, but one of the things that's happened recently to me is that I can't drive over bridges anymore. Really, I'm scared of driving over bridges. This is what happened in Italy, or just it seems crazy to me to drive over a bridge. I don't know. I can walk over bridges, but I don't like to drive over bridges, and as a result, it's limited how much i'd drive. Now. Really, that's not you're okay with tunnels, I'm okay with you.

I will tell you that as a kid driving over the Williamsburg Bridge in the outer roadway, where it was just this sort of metal um framework, like a mesh framework, where you can look down through the road at the water, and I made this horrible humming sound on the tires. I was never thrilled with that particular bridge. It's funny. I can be a passenger in a car driving over bridge. I just don't want to drive it myself. I don't trust myself, even though I don't know what I could do.

I'm afraid i'd freak out. But you know, if you have to have that fear now, I didn't have it when I was younger, I haven't now. If you have to have it now in the land of uber and driving, okay, it's not as as it could be. Who who are your early mentors, who guarded your career in academia and who led you into the world of marketing and retail.

Well you know, um, if you're a doctoral student and you get a PhD, which I did a lot of times, your your dissertation advisor is a big mentor, and my dissertation I got my PhD at Columbia and my dissertation advisor was Don Morrison, who just recently retired UM. And he was he called himself a full service advisor. He advised everything in my academic life and my personal life,

so he made a really big difference. More recently, I UM left Wharton for a few years to go down to University of Miami to be the dean of the Business school there. And when I was there, Donna Leela was the president of Miami. Um Clinton administration. Yeah, she was the Secretary of Health and Human Services under Clinton for the longest serving Health and Human Services, and then she was also had a big career in academia. She was president of Hunter College and she was president University

of Miami. More recently, she headed the Clinton Foundation when Hillary was running, which was kind of an interesting least to be I would imagine. And now she went back to Miami and she just won the Democratic seat for a congress for you know, the counsel. Yeah, so she was very ray. Very recently, she won the Democratic primary for that seat, which I think was held by a Republican but so hopefully she can still win it. And she's seventy seven, and I gotta say she's an amazing

role model. She really taught me what it was like to be a leader. Taught me, you know, how to face adversary, adversity, you know, to figure out what you should do. She taught me the importance of low hanging fruit, visible signs, and long term strategy. She was really amazing. I had no idea she had she was running or had won that. And just last night I think it was Massachusetts. Um there was a woman challenger to the sitting Democrat uh in the House, and she beat him.

And there's no Republican running against them. This year very much looks like the year of the woman, a giant, giant shift. It's quite fascinating, Donna La, that's really interesting. Um So tell us about the retailers who influence the way you look at the world of retail. Well, you know, that was one of the things I tried to do in my book, also to look at who's winning, and and that's what I focused on. Who's losing I wasn't as interested in. And so the retailers I think are

doing a great job. Of course, at Amazon, I'm really impressed with Walmart, Costco is a very interesting reach. They've been a them and BJS have both been doing really well. And there's a data point I saw that said of Costco members are Amazon Prime, which means they're holding two memberships. Um. And that means and Amazon sells the same things Costco sells.

So Costco is doing something right. Get the Giant if you have like five kids and you want those giant like I personally don't need two gallons of salsa, But if you walk into a Costco when you want those giant packages, I love the idea. Yeah, business is like it, but it's all so. You know, they sell gas, so you have to drive there anyway. They have the in store sampling. There's a bit of a treasure hunt feeling

in Costco. So the point is that there's something they're doing right in the physical store to make people have two memberships. That's I'm really impressed with them. I visited Costco in Seattle and I just loved that. I love their philosophy, I love the way they think. You mentioned Mickey Drexler and the Gap previously. Um, any of the retailers, Starbucks,

anybody else come to mind. As as doing anything innovative. Well, obviously Starbucks invented customer experience, you know, they the third Place and all of that stuff. I can't tell you how many Harvard cases are written a bad start, really,

you know. Yeah, so that whole idea when they described experience is different than than the way Amazon I'm described it, but they understood that also, so that I also like t J Max and Burlington give the notion of the treasure hunt in those stores, um, and how they keep the prices way down and still understand scarcity and exclusive civity. You know, that's kind of interesting. You don't want to go into a store and see twenty different of these A dresses on a special price. You want to find

one that's just for you. You know, that's an interesting idea. So let's talk about books. This is everybody's favorite question. Tell us about some of your favorite books, be they fiction, nonfiction, retail related, or not. You know, I was an English lit major, so I read lots of fiction for a really long time, and my best my favorite books would be the classics or some of the best selling fiction.

But most recently I have been reading more nonfiction, so I really like, um, you know, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis. I also like to read female comedians. So I like Sarah Silverman and I like Tina Facebook. I like. I read both of those and they're both very amusing. Yeah, they're very amusing and I like their take. So the Sarah Silverman's book was The Bed or something like that and ums Pants. Yeah, yeah, they were both um absolutely.

Uh any other female comedian books you would recommend, because those are the only two I have. Those are the two ones I read. I don't. I have to read so much academic stuff that it's sometimes hard to read books. So what what has you excited about retail today? What do you really jazzed about. Well, one of the things I'm starting to do, I'm thinking of developing, working with a partner to develop a new course on visual marketing

and visual markets. So what we can learn by eye tracking and what people are attracted to the website or in a physical stuff. You can wear goggles and see what people look at the store, you can see what they look at online. We start to see what's automatic reaction to visual You know, you said your wife as a designer, it's kind of interesting to see what people

are struck by how they scan a product. So this new neural marketing idea, the idea of new ways to collect data, new ways to get in people's heads or to see what they automatically and can't tell you they appreciate. When you start to care about what customers want in retail, these different ways of measuring it is pretty exciting. Uh that that that's quite interesting. Um, what do you think is the most significant change we're going to see in

retail over the next couple of years. I think we're going to continue to see retailers that just don't cut it go out of business. And I think that's okay, you know, And I think Amazon is gonna keep pushing. They're gonna They're gonna go into other businesses that I'm really interested to see what happens. They're talking about the retailization of healthcare, talk about the situation that is so

non customer focused healthcare. I mean, you can't get worse service than in healthcare, you know, cable is probably so. I think you're gonna see changes in all of that. And the idea that this retail model has legs that it should appuied to lots of different ways of thinking. I think that we're going to see big changes there. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I am a car guy. The car shopping experience is horrific. Any chance we're ever going to see that improved tesla see SEMs to be

making some headway. Yeah, he's an interesting guy, Wharton grad. Oh is he under to say the least? He's an interesting guy. Of all the retail experiences there is, there is none more entrenched in the past than going out and trying to shop for a call. Oh my god, I can't stand it. I just so, why has nobody disrupted that yet? Well, some people have tried to do it.

I guess some people like the game of that. I don't know very you know, it's it should be disrupted them that That's what you're looking for, Things that are not pleasant, that people don't want to do. Somebody's going to come in and do it, right you You Wharton students get busy on that. Um, so, tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from the experience. Well, uh, you know, there's a couple of times. They're difficult to

talk about. So, but what characterized the times and several points during my life that I failed where something came as a surprise to me. That's what I would say. It's it's a function of mine not being a very good self monitor And what I mean by that is I think I have a lot of empathy, and I can see what's going on and I look around. I see a lot. I can feel people's emotional reactions and think. But what I am not good at is understanding how

I come off to other people. So that's called self monitoring. I don't anticipate maybe if I get angry, how people will what people will feel about that, or if i'm you know, short, tempt you know, or say something very in a quick way. I don't appreciate that, and that's gotten me into trouble to not like understand. It's not just what I see, but it's how people see me that that that's intriguing. I will plead guilty to that as well. Um, what do you do for fun when

you're not in the classroom? What what do you do to to kick back and relax? You know? The more the older I get, it's interesting for this, The more important I find running, working out, being outdoors walking. I could spend when I was younger, long times at a desk. Now, if I do that crazy, I just can't stand it. That's why I'm glad I teach, because you walk around the classroom. But I really like the outdoors. I like running.

I like working out. So you have a fitbit and an Apple Watch on the same hand, at least I have things on two different hands. Why bo I like I like when I'm working out to monitor, you know, self quantify, so they measure different things. So I have social networks that are connected in different ways. I compete on all of this stuff. I love it. I love to see how my heart rate was today, how well I slept. All of that stuff. My wife wears it when she sleeps. I hate having something on my wrist

while I'm sleeping. It's a distraction. Um So is it an accurate monitor of your sleep? Pause? Oh? Apparently you know. I guess I take it. It works for me. So you work with millennials and young people. If someone were to come to you and say they were interested in exploring career in marketing or digital brands or retail, what

sort of advice would you give them. Well, one of the thing, you know, when I was the dean of Miami, I talked to a lot of successful deans, always talked the successful alums, and I asked around, like what advice would you give students? And from talking to all those people, I came up with three things that they said really made a difference. The first one and they seem obvious, but sometimes people don't know this. The first thing is

work hard. You know, don't take it for granted. You're given a job, a job that maybe you like, work hard at it. The second one is be nice to people. Be nice to everyone. You know, from the receptionist all the way down up to the CEO. Pay attention because people watch that behavior, and you know, going back to this notion of self monitoring, understand how you come off to all these other people, and that matters. And the third piece of advice that people said over and over

was don't just learn what you do. Learn what your people on both sides of you do also, so learn other skills. And then when you do that, you're in the right place at the right time for potential promotion. Because a lot of movement and firms are not so systematic. It really is an accident or somebody got hurt and

someone needs to step in and do something. These things, these opportunities come up, and you know, they say luck is you know, hard work or however they say that you know something, someone's lucky, was working hard for that

lucky opportunity, opportunity or something like that. Yeah, yeah, I'm angling it too, but it's that's the idea interesting and our final question, what is it that you know about the world of retail and marketing today that you wish you knew twenty plus years ago when you first started

your career. You know, like I said, when I was writing this book, it was shocking to me that I have been teaching marketing for a hundred million years and we always achieved these principles of customer value, differential advantage, and the third one is selectivity and concentration, which has to do its segmentation. And that I did not realize until I sat down and wrote this book and thought about what Amazon did, that retail was not customer focused.

That's like so amazing to me, because that retails about selling to the consumer. How could they not understand that the consumer input is important and it shouldn't just be a push strategy. It's amazing to me. Well, for how long did that strategy work before it's suddenly stop working. It's yeah, if the market gets competitive enough, if you don't have enough competition. And that's why whenever I give a talk on any of this stuff, I asked the room, is Amazon a good guy or a bad guy? And

it's always fifty if you're a customer. If you're a customer, you say Amazon is a good guy. If you're a competitor, you your face gets you read and you just hate Amazon because competing against Amazon is so difficult. But most people will agree what Amazon has done is raised the bar for everybody, frost the board across lots of different industries. Huh. Quite fascinating. We have been speaking with Professor Barbara con

of the Wharton School of Business. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll be sure and look up an inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes and you can see any of the past two hundred plus conversations we've had previously. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that helps me put together these conversations each week. Attica val bron is our project manager. Medina Parwana is my

producer slash audio engineer par Excellence. Taylor Riggs is our booker slash producer. Michael Batnick is our head of research. I'm Barry Ritults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio