Market Research Articles

When I was 12 or so, a friend of mine and l used to hitchhike into Oakland from Lafayette, the small rural community in Contra Costa where I grew up. There were movie theaters in Oakland, and we would thumb our way in and catch movies like The House of Wax. And then thumb our way home. You could do that in those days. A few years later, when I was 16, I got a summer job in a factory…

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  I was a banker. I enjoyed it, but “confession” because some people find the profession objectionable. Of course, it depends on what you do with it. For those on the good side of The Force, it is a profession that enables one to help. But that’s right, earlier in life I was a senior credit officer. First, with a bank in the San Francisco Bay Area and later, after moving South, with a bank in Beverly Hills. So, later,…

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The brand is British born but has always carried a kind of a sexy glamor internationally. The famous Jaguar SS 100 made it’s debut in the late 30s. https://tinyurl.com/bdhpdw9mAnd several models have subsequently served as transportation for British royalty over the years. Queen Elisabeth II “…was also particularly taken with a humble Jaguar X-Type family five-door– clocking up a healthy 70,000 miles, more often than not taking the wheel herself.” https://tinyurl.com/mv7teap7 Here, in the U.S., Steve McQueen drove a Jag…

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So, it turns out that before this new CEO at Cracker Barrel, Julie Feless Masino, who nuked poor Uncle Herschel off of the company’s logo, has been bouncing around corporate America for years like a mouse in a cheese factory looking for a tasty block of cheddar. Before Cracker Barrel she was at Taco Bell (where she created serious customer backlash for cutting favorites off of the menu). Before that, at she was at Mattel toys. She had come to…

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I confess that when we moved out of LA 8 years ago we did not do so because we foresaw the mob insanity that has engulfed the city of late. Try to get somewhere on time on the 101 or the 405 in the afternoon or breathe the afternoon air on a summer day embraced with LA’s infamous smog. Oh, it wasn’t all bad. We had a nice place in Toluca Lake, a small community between Burbank and Glendale with…

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  A man channeling Wild Bill Hickok charged into the bank as if he was chasing a party of renegade Apaches. He marched past the receptionist, by two other loan officers and sat down in the chair in front of my desk without being asked. He had long gray hair tied back in a ponytail, a mustache and a little goatee that came to a point below his chin. “Wanna’ get a loan,” he said and slid a brochure across…

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