In an age when information about a product - good and bad - is just a mouse-click away, marketers are learning to value openness.

Talking openly is not the stalwart of most marketers. We tend to migrate more toward providing hype instead of help.

So imagine the fear that must be …

As part of a promotion, Stacy’s Pita Chip Company sent sample packages to 133,000 people nationwide - but only to people named Stacy.

According to Peter Fader at the Wharton School, even the most pessimistic forecasts of online grocery shopping posited 10 years ago proved to be too optimistic. For certain products, he says, consumers seem to be hardwired to see them, touch them and interact with a salesperson.

Although its Internet business is growing at a rate of 30 percent a year, The Container Store uses its customized direct mail and catalogs to get customers into their retail stores, where they can interact with expert staff members.

To reach the right customers, you have to know where they are

By: W. Eric Martin

Customers move with the wind, sometimes literally. When Hurricane Katrina struck southern Louisiana in August 2005, for example, the population of New Orleans fell from 485,000 to just a few thousand within days.

That’s a …

Loyalty programs, once regarded as little more than afterthoughts by many major companies, are increasingly becoming part of many big brands’ core business

By: Elaine Appleton Grant

When Kent Gilmore, the COO of $110-million Nahan Printing, turned to GE Capital Solutions for a loan last winter, the Connecticut-based company didn’t just …