If you do this, you will notice that occasionally some meetings will be missing from your portable device (yet these meetings show up fine in Outlook). These most seem to be recurring meetings. There’s some sort of issue here where if a recurring meeting has a ‘change’ after it was created, it can get lost. Not sure how or why, and searching the web gave me a number of conflicting opinions on this.

However, the fix is easy. Just go to your Settings in your device and turn OFF the Calendar sync with Exchange. It will delete all the calendar entries. Then turn it back ON. They will re-download, including any missing appointments. Simple and useful fix.

I will update this if I ever figure out what is causing this or a way to prevent it.

1. http://matrix.itasoftware.com/
2. http://www.kayak.com/flights
3. http://www.farecompare.com/
4. http://www.southwest.com/
5. http://www.allegiantair.com/

From there you should be able to identify the best deal.

You should also:

1. Try RoundTrip vs. Two-One-Way tickets.
2. Try early morning weekdays.
3. Check historical/trend/peer pricing
   1. http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/
   2. http://www.bing.com/travel/ (they have a Price Predictor)

Good Luck!

People no longer maintain brand loyalty, instead they are now doing something I like to call “Convenience Loyalty”. We shop at the supermarket and pharmacy that is closest to our house. We describe companies offerings by how convenient they are to our lives and not by the company itself. We use the same search engine and web browser for months and years, switching only after being convinced that a different one is better and more convenient.

The Electric Razor

Take, as a hypothetical example, that you need to buy a brand new electric razor. Do you spend any time pondering if Gillete, Norelco, or Braun make the best razor? What about Phillips? Instead, you are more likely, like most of today’s computer enabled consumers, to type “electric razor” into Google, see which are the lower cost, yet top rated razors available in the market. You then either hop over to Google Shopping, Amazon, or similar and review a listing of electric razors by price or popularity, with little colored stars telling you what previous purchasers thought of that item.

In the end your decision has nothing to do with brand, and everything to do with price, peer reviews, product reputation. Who cares what brand it was, right? And that shift was possible to the convenience Amazon, Google, and related brought to your computer.

Basically, it means the top sellers in the world of electric razors are not the brands you expected, but instead they are Google, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. Companies that have no background or experience in electric razors.

Time Travel

Imagine you had just come from 20 years ago and you were a music fan who followed the music industry. You might ask someone, who is the biggest music publisher today? Shockingly, everyone would give you the same answer, Apple. “Apple? The computer company?” You may then inquire as to which major music publisher did Apple partner with to achieve this? To which we shocking answer is “none”.

You may then inquire about movie rentals. A hot rising business when you left, with companies like Blockbuster starting to take over a very aggressive market. But the answer would be confusing, “Netflix”. Not being familiar with that name, you may inquire as to which major movie studios were partners with that venture. Again, the answer is “none”.

Yet, those two companies don’t make the items for the markets they have taken over. Apple produces no music. Netflix has no studio backing and no storefronts. Both have instead taken over those markets by focusing on servicing convenience. Creating loyalty to how convenient they have made it to acquire the products they sell.

Convenient Rules

An entire market is developing around convenient servicing. The Internet being the enabling technology for a very simple concept. He who makes it easiest to acquire a product the customer wants gets the sale. Take a look at how car rentals are evolving.

Renting a Car

Years ago we used to have a preference for renting a car. You developed a brand loyalty for a company that took care of you, didn’t charge you too much, and had a nice modern car waiting for you. Then came the internet. Today, you go to a travel web site, select the city and dates, and get back a listing of all major car rental companies and prices. You don’t really care what brand (as long as it is one of the big guys and not a fly-by-night operation) and you make your choice entirely by price. There may still be a few loyalist remaining out there, but they are a dwindling minority. It is amazing so many car rental brands are still around, I can only simply assume that they will soon start merging since the consumer doesn’t really care for the choice they are offering. They just want a modern car at a good price. Seriously, can anyone explain why I would rent from Dollar vs General? Or Hertz vs Avis?

Where do we go next?

Where we go next is we need to change our thinking. We are no longer in the business of building brand loyalty because of the product we sell. We are now in the business of building Convenient Loyalty based on how convenient we make it for our customers to acquire and use our products. Walgreens or CVS? Which one is on the ‘right’ when I reach the intersection? Decisions today are less about marketing and more about the physical convenience that a vendor offers us.

Every day more and more of our leisure dollars are being spent through companies that do not create any of the products we seek. Companies like Priceline, Kayak, Amazon, Netflix. These are companies that specialize in servicing convenience.

Companies must adapt to this reality and start investing heavily in servicing, taking it to levels they never imagined before. More on ‘next steps’ in my next blog posting.