Whatever you do, you leave effects. If these effects are undesirable, unwarranted, then you get negative effectiveness. You effectively make enemies and drive away your customers.
"Go the extra mile," exhorts Andrew Carnegie.
These days, many businesses refuse to go even the last necessary mile.
Let alone the extra mile.
IKEA is DIY. That is fine because people are familiar with those pieces of furniture. Even for new, unfamiliar ones, they still have visual, easy-to-follow instructions. Even without such instructions, when pieces are few in number, people can still figure out which piece goes with which and so on.
You can open a Gmail, Yahoo mail, hotmail account in minutes.
You can make a Blogger, Wordpress blog in minutes.
You can open a Facebook, Myspace, Ning, Basecamp account in minutes too.
Yes, that's why they are there, at the top, with millions of users.
Can you say the same for certain mobile phones, home theatres, office softwares, even some sophisticated bikes?
If you are a retailer, will you sell someone a hand phone that s/he cannot set up by herself?
Will you sell them home entertainment systems that they have no clue about?
Will you sell them those office softwares that they won't be able to install?
Will you say that the clueless mustn't come to your shops?
If they cannot do stuffs for themselves, do they have some service or professionals to serve them?
If they don't, do you provide such services?
This is not the extra mile that Andrew Carnegie talked about.
This is the last necessary mile that a shop like BEST BUY is doing: "Geek Squad," "Walk Out Working."
Geek Squad install stuffs for you at your home, you walk out of their store with your newly bought phones working, etc. The effects : BEST BUY's competitors have gone out of business.
This represents a gold mine of opportunities for us to exploit.
NB. I left out dozens of quotes and examples not to clutter this post.
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