Marketing & Selling

The Black Friday sales frenzy can trigger our deepest emotional and cognitive responses and can lead us down a path of unnecessary spending. However, consumers can use insights from behavioural economics to empower them to make decisions that align with their individual financial goals.

The customer satisfaction gap between South Africa’s banks is closing rapidly, with the digital acceleration brought about by the pandemic being a significant equaliser. Banks are under significant pressure to reinvent their customer value propositions and differentiators at a time when technology and digitisation are making them increasingly invisible to their customers - until things go wrong.

People are often heard describing products and services coming out of Africa as African. For those who have been lucky enough to have travelled the continent you’d understand the problems that come with blanket branding or making the secondary branding your primary branding. Africa is made up of 54 countries. So when someone says that something is uniquely African, isn’t that labelling a bit too loose? And shouldn’t the African theme be secondary or better yet a tertiary reference from a nomenclature perspective?

Businesses must release new, exciting digital experiences and products at higher velocities than ever before to remain relevant and continue to increase their share of wallet in this brave new world which we refer to as the post-digital era. This unprecedented pace of innovation has several unintended consequences, which, if not purposefully addressed, can erode trust and alienate customers.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then, surely, a GIF must be worth a couple of thousand more? The GIF or GIF (because how to pronounce it remains one of the modern world’s greatest mysteries) is nothing new, having been introduced to the world all the way back in 1987 by Steve Wilhite.

What are your rights when an online transaction goes wrong? The worldwide pandemic, and associated lockdown, have brought about many changes in consumer behaviour. One of which is the surge in online shopping. As South African consumers adapt to the new normal, where traditional ways of shopping are largely discouraged in favour of online shopping (in an effort to promote social distancing), the number of card-not-present transactions (card transactions that occur while the buyer and seller are not in the same place) has increased exponentially.

Few people find it easy to get up and give a speech in front of their professional peers, but a degree of public speaking is required in most professional spheres.

Well known economist, Thabi Leoka’s meteoric fall from grace was pretty much self-inflicted. It’s the old adage of "don’t tell a lie, you will be caught out". However, this whole situation could have been prevented, and misconceptions cleared up years ago, had all the entities involved done their due diligence.

We all have to deal with difficult people, all of us have to deal with difficult people. Whether we are asking our boss for a pay rise or we are asking our neighbour to move a fence, we can struggle to avoid arguments and get what we want.

South Africa has a very eager and vibrant entrepreneurial spirit and community. This is fortunate because if we are ever to make an impact on the massive requirement for job growth in this country, it is from small and medium enterprises (SME’s) that it must come.