Just a little news.
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* Amazon.com Corp. <AMZN.O> lashed back at WalMart, filing a countersuit that escalates a battle between the retailers.
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Seattle, March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. filed a countersuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., saying Wal-Mart sued Amazon.com to try to keep employees from defecting to the online bookseller and Drugstore.com Inc., which is partially owned by Amazon.com, the Wall Street Journal reported. The suit, filed in Washington state court, is a response to Wal-Mart's claim that Amazon.com improperly recruited Wal-Mart employees to gain access to trade secrets. An unidentified Wal-Mart spokeswoman reiterated the company's belief that Amazon.com's recruitment of 16 former employees was an effort to gain ''very specific, detailed knowledge about key aspects of our business,'' the paper said.
Wal-Mart filed suit against Amazon.com in Washington on Jan. 4 after an Arkansas judge dismissed part of another suit over the claims.<<
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Promoting a meeting it will hold this week, The Conference Board asks rhetorically, ''Does quality pay off?''
Well, of course it does. Otherwise companies could not succeed year after year, decade after decade, as literally thousands have, and American productivity could never have grown as strongly as it has.
Over time, customers catch on to what's worthwhile and what fails to meet their expectations about price, service and reliability. And whenever their quality expectations aren't met they look elsewhere.
Until the 1950s and 1960s, for example, American carmakers essentially had the domestic market, the largest of any single country and some continents, all to themselves. Then look what happened.
As domestic carmakers got complacent, Japanese and German producers, were selling cars in the United States on the basis of quality. They made huge inroads.
In response, U.S. carmakers woke up, instituted new methods, spent billions of dollars on modernized production facilities and raised standards of design, workmanship and service.
Now, you cannot compare the vehicle of today with that of 30 years ago. It is not quite, but nearly so, like comparing the horse to the Model T. Today's car is nearly that far ahead of the car of 30 years ago.
Still, there are notable gaps in consumer willingness to put up with deficiencies in quality. To name a few: transportation, stocks, health insurance, Internet service providers, and TV and Internet advertising.
Hang around any airport almost day, talk to a few people and you'll hear an earful about canceled flights, late departures and arrivals, missed connections, lack of leg room, meager meals and a lot more.
In stocks, it sometimes is a matter of wonder how so many thousands of mutual funds have been created over the past 20 years when so many of them, far more than half, fail to match the popular averages.
Awesome too is that a company such as Amazon.com rose more than 900 percent last year without ever having earned a nickel This, while almost every broker has a list of quality companies selling at big discounts.
Health insurance is an industry in transition, and as a result is the recipient of repeated complaints and confusion.
Very late-night TV ads, as well as Internet ads and offerings in the lower end of the cable spectrum, may offer amazing bargains -- until items are received. And the same might be said of some gardening and mail order catalogs.
Internet access providers are often barraged with criticisms for poor service -- notably, failure to obtain access and long waits for service -- but America Online is one of the nation's fastest growing companies.
Anybody can add to the list. What about billing errors on your credit card, or phone bill? And is the quality of service on those ''money cheerfully refunded'' guarantees as good as promised?
It raises the question: Can clever, convincing marketing overcome consumer dissatisfaction? No doubt it can, for a while. But not forever. Buyers eventually realize what's promise and what's fulfillment.
Detroit can tell you all about that.
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