Lindsay - just saw your comment going through the "waiting for moderation" folder for blog comments (sorry, it thought you were spam!).

I'm relaying this concept with data, of course! The support/problem-related search keywords that drive in-bound traffic to the site, internal site search keywords, number of customer service contacts via the website contact form, and the feedback forms on the site all make for staggering numbers that provide a very rich dataset.

In our business too, we have a large salesforce team that has their finger on the pulse of issues at the store-level (store associates & consumers providing the reps feedback). It's becoming more apparent that not everyone calls in because the sentiment in-store doesn't always align with our call center data (good or bad). We are looking at other ways of gathering store-level feedback.

I have the Apple Store app as well and the only options I see are related to scheduling an appointment for a 1-on-1 training session or the Genius Bar...

Thanks for the post - I think we'll see restaurants improve their online ordering experiences in the upcoming years. Right now, many folks are just happy to have the ability to order online and despite these issues you and I experienced, the majority will be able to place an order without concern.

This changes when someone enters the market with a superior ordering experience. Competition and time will drive companies to improve the ordering process. Retailers understand this and the checkout process is as important as the pricing and products purchased. For restaurants venturing into online, right now it's still the food that's priority #1.

Mark,

If this is happening, then the manufacturer doesn't understand the concept of proper channel management (which informs a pricing strategy). Typically, manufacturers selling direct will either implement a MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policy which establishes advertised pricing parity in the market or they will choose to sell at a premium price on their site (and potentially offer other value-added services to account for the increased retail price the consumer pays).

In your example, I do not understand why a manufacturer would do this unless they started their business this way and recently entered into selling through retailers. If the manufacturer is not a traditional retailer, then they probably don't excel at direct marketing or fully understanding the needs of the consumer in the shopping process -- in which case, you probably can excel at search marketing when someone does a Google search for the product.

The only ammunition you really have is leveraging their competitors' pricing practices over theirs. At least, hopefully their competition (if any) has implemented a more intelligent pricing strategy.

-Eric

I wish iChat natively supported Yahoo! as well.

I've been using meebo.com for an IM client that supports several IM services (Yahoo! is included). The video support is not very high quality, but I switch to iChat when I need to do any web chats. I am a big fan of the web-based Meebo service - they also have an iPhone/iPod Touch app which makes it very easy to use one source for all of my IM logins.

-Eric

Terry - funny you mentioned ordering Pizza online. I had already begun a 3-part series on pizza configurators for PapaJohns.com, PizzaHut.com, and Dominos.com. Just posted the first intallment: http://www.ebusinessblog.org/531/configurator-usa...

David - it all comes down to knowing your communications preferences. In my opinion, if I left my contact information at a car dealership and the salesman calls me back after a couple days, it's a pretty standard follow-up. I knew what I was getting into when I left my contact info. In this case of Apple's site, I wasn't fully aware that I'd receive a follow-up email, but given my past purchase history with Apple, I wasn't irate that they had automatically followed up with me.

In an ideal world, they'd follow up automatically with anyone and everyone who abandons the purchase funnel but to your point, there probably needs to be a bit of "pre-qualification" (through means of evaluating past purchase history, how long they spent on the site through the purchase decision process, etc.) so as to not alienate potential buyers from the product.

Mike - The point behind the blog post was to illustrate the confusion their website created for me as a potential buyer. Based on what you wrote, it sounds like you found information on the differences between their products not from the Tempur-pedic website or from the marketing materials they emailed to you, but from other sites as a result of your Google search.

A manufacturer website should be able to provide all of the comparison information I need in order to understand the difference between their own manufactured products. Not just a feature listing, but a benefit of those features. For example, on the Tempur-pedic product comparison page above, I can't see what the benefits of a "T-Flex Support System" base layer are compared to a "Dual AirFlow System" base layer or why I'd choose one over the other.

Mike - Is your Mac connecting to your Blackberry via bluetooth and that's where you're having the disconnect problem? Or is your Blackberry not establishing a data connection? The instructions posted in this blog post are literally all I did to get my Mac working with my Blackberry -- the critical component is downloading the modem script for your Blackberry and putting it into the folder indicated in my original post.

-Eric

Jim - Nothing was published to indicate that this was a "new" venture for P&G but it was recently highlighted on the Financial Times website -- probably more to do with the Wal-Mart executive hired to specifically investigate the potential impact of manufacturer-driven initiatives like this.

Like I mentioned above, it'll probably lead to several unpleasant discussions between the retailer and manufacturer, but at the end of the day, the consumer ultimately benefits from the competition this will breed.