Smart move by the airline companies?

Earlier in the week this article about what airlines are doing to increase revenue caught my eye because we had been talking about the airline industry in class. I found it interesting that they were trying to find a profit pool within their struggling industry. The article discusses how airline fees are continuing to go up. These fees include pet fees, extra baggage fees, and rebooking of flights. This has proved profitable to the airline companies but has also led to an outcry by customers. Last night I was at a recruiting event and the people at my people started complaining about these fees. It was interesting to me to see how unhappy people are about this. It is an interesting strategy for an industry that has really been struggling lately, but I feel like it might alienate too many people. I guess we will so though.

http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/story/2011-09-19/Airlines-see-revenue-increase-from-fees/50469608/1

P & G - Focusing their efforts of Hispanic Shoppers

I found an article by Ellen Byron in the Wall Street Journal titled, " Hola: P&G Seeks Latino Shoppers". I found this article to be interesting and have some correlation to the models with have been studying in class. The article discuss P&G current push to shift their strategies in the United States market to attract more Latino shoppers. P&G is tweaking their products, retargeting its marketing, changing its celebrity mix, and using more Spanish on its products. The United States market is the most important for P&G because it represents the most profits. They are shifting a focus to Latino shoppers because Hispanics have accounted for more than half of the population growth in the US. They also tend to have younger and larger families which is important to P&G.

I know this isn't a direct example of "profit pools" but I feel like we can relate it. P&G isn't identifying what part of the industry is most profitable but they are targeting which segment of the market is growing the fastest. With the Latino market only representing 9 % of the market share, P&G envisions this number to grow and sees this market as more profitable than other options. Through doing this P&G is hoping to gain a leg up on the competition.

Also, in another article I found it interesting to see Sears starting to move away from their traditional business strategy and start selling their Kenmore brand in others stores. They are trying to react to lackluster sells in their stores, but this move could lead to even more lose of sells. It will be interesting to see what happens.