Friday, Oct. 16, 2009 - 9:24 a.m.

I hope my tea gets here soon. I just don't feel like I've performed my morning ritual correctly if I'm drinking anything other than Assam. Which means I never quite wake up and get down to business.

Today, trying to get to the bottom of my price assortment problem. Found a good article in the Journal of Retailing on factors related to assortment that influence consumer choice. I'll spare you the details, but one of the interesting things is that there are times when you want to introduce an item into the assortment knowing that it will not sell well. It will be there solely to drive sales toward higher-margin items. This presents for me the peculiar challenge of intentionally designing items to be less attractive than certain others. And there's a whole nother dynamic when it comes to galleries, and how one's items fit into the assortment there...lots of galleries have the idea that they can't give shelf space to something that's not selling, but frankly, that's EXACTLY what saavvier, bigger retailers (with smarter merchandising and marketing departments) do.

That is all.

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