New York SBDC Research Network

Article by Lucy Koch From erMarketing Marketers and consumers feel differently about the delivery of an excellent customer experience. To reconcile this, marketers should turn their attention to consumers’ top concerns, such as privacy and personalization. In the US, almost half of marketers think they’re delivering an “excellent” customer experience, according to January 2019 research from The Harris Poll. But fewer than a quarter of consumers felt the same. Privacy, the concern emphasized most in the study, received 4.1 fewer points from consumers than from marketers. Additionally, 60% of respondents said they’d be less likely to shop or use services in the future if a company sent their personal information to other companies.

By Joel Libava From Small Business Administration Before I share my ideas on how you can get past your fear of buying a franchise, I need to address this issue: It’s perfectly normal to have feelings of fear when you’re thinking about buying a franchise. Let’s see if I can help alleviate some of these fears for you. Transition Fears You’re probably worried about the transition you’ll be making if you decide to move forward with the franchise opportunity you’re interested in. The transition I’m referring to is from employee to employer. And it’s a big one. The reason it’s so big is because of all the responsibilities you’ll have as the owner of a franchise. You’ll be responsible for things like: Hiring Payroll Inventory Marketing Operations Business Development Expenses And part of your fear has to do with the fact that you may not know how to do all of those things. The good news is that when you’re a franchisee, you’ll receive formal training on every aspect o...

BY MELANIE LOCKERT From The Balance : If you have an introverted personality, you might shy away from some jobs that require a lot of face time or public interaction. There are numerous jobs and side gigs that are perfect for introverts, allowing you to make extra money without having to deal extensively with other people. How much you make depends on what you’re selling and how much time you’re willing to put into it — this can be a side hustle to make you a little extra money​ or a full-time business that can make you thousands of dollars a month. Also: Are you an introverted small business owner? You are not alone: Networking and social gatherings By Wayne Fowler For the Halton Hills Chamber of Commerce

By Kristin Manganello From ThomasNet Although “climate” is often used interchangeably with “weather,” the two are related but different. “Weather” refers to day-to-day atmospheric conditions and precipitation, whereas “climate” refers to the larger pattern of weather. Earth’s climate system consists of five components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (all fresh and saltwater), the cryosphere (ice), the lithosphere (solid land), and the biosphere (all living plants and animals). Although weather and natural disasters have always been unpredictable to a certain degree, climate change has made it more difficult to predict the timing and severity of these events. This means that managing supply chains has become more challenging on several fronts. These recent events serve as a reminder that warehouses, roads, railroads, power plants, and other critical facilities are extremely susceptible to the elements. “Extreme weather events can have a catastrophic effect on the productio...

By Lucy Koch From eMarketer We estimate that more than half of the US Hispanic population will use messaging app WhatsApp at least monthly this year. The platform’s US Hispanic user base of 32 million is growing because of its data cost savings, messaging encryption capabilities and popularity in Latin American countries. WhatsApp is more popular among US Hispanics than Instagram or Twitter, with those platforms seeing 34.3% and 21% user penetration, respectively. For greater context, that means there are 10 million more US Hispanics on WhatsApp than Instagram, and almost triple more than Twitter.  Much of the platform’s popularity is driven by its high use in Latin American countries. Older US Hispanics who wish to communicate with friends and families in these countries can do so via the app. Younger people use the platform to stay in touch with relatives in the US and Latin America because of the easy-to-use interface.

By Anna Auerbach From LinkedIn HubSpot was one of Werk’s earliest supporters, which put me in the orbit of Chief People Officer Katie Burke, who recently joined me the first installment of “Looking Forward.” She shares my passion for flexibility solutions—even the kinds that don't make headlines or annual reports. "Some of the most important work that we do is not measured in revenue but in the trips that aren't taken, in the hours and minutes that people get to spend at home with their loved ones, and in the trust that we build when we create space for people to have those types of connections with their families or with their lives or with things that matter most," she told me. Millennials get a bad rap for demanding a lot of flexibility, but I think the reality is they just demanded what everyone in the workforce actually wants. Gen Z, millennials, Baby Boomers—I actually think everyone wants flexibility at work. And so I think we'll continue to see...

By Cecilia D'Anastasio From Kotaku The mainstream narrative of esports has been lovingly crafted by those who benefit from its success. There’s big money in esports, they say. You’ve heard the stories. Teenaged gamers flown overseas to sunny mansions with live-in chefs. The erection of $50 million arenas for Enders Game-esque sci-fi battles. League of Legends pros pulling down seven-figure salaries. Yet there’s a reason why these narratives are provocative enough to attract lip-licking headlines in business news and have accrued colossal amounts of venture capital. More and more, esports is looking like a bubble ready to pop. “I feel like esports is almost running a Ponzi scheme at this point,” Frank Fields, Corsair’s sponsorship manager, told an audience at San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference last March. He smirked. The crowd laughed uncomfortably. The smile dropped from Fields’ face as he continued. “Everyone I talk to in this industry kind of acknowledges the fact th...

By Caitlin Mullen From BizJournals [Researchers'] findings? Heavier drinking after work is more likely for those who routinely fake smiles, seem happier than they are or suppress the urge to roll their eyes — called “surface acting” — while on the job. It’s more than job stress that leads people to drink, researchers found. The more workers had to maintain control over negative emotions at work — suppressing their actual emotions in front of customers or the public — the less able they were to control their alcohol intake at the end of the day. In other words, they’ve exhausted self-control by the time they’re done with work. It was most apparent in impulsive people whose jobs involve one-time service encounters with customers — like coffee shop baristas or call center employees — rather than workers like nurses or teachers, who build relationships with patients or students, the study, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, discovered.

From the Empire Center Tables summarizing the latest Census Bureau population estimates for towns, cities, and villages in New York State have been posted in the Data section of the Empire Center’s website. The tables are sortable by county, name of the locality, population totals, changes and rate of change. They can also be downloaded by users. The tables are: City and Village Population Change 2017-2018 City and Village Population Change 2010-2018 Town Population Change 2017-2018 Town Population Change 2010-2018

BY SUSAN WARD From The Balance: Small Business The title of this article is a bit misleading. These aren’t the absolutely worst ideas for starting businesses. They were fine ideas for starting a business in their day, as were film developing, video stores, dial-up internet services, and horse-drawn carriages. But for some, that day is gone and these are no longer necessarily good choices. Some are no longer good choices because their potential markets have been saturated. You can still start a business in a saturated market, but if you do you’ll have to find a specific niche you can target and/or have especially strong skills. For others, times have changed and no matter how talented you are or how much you love the idea are, your new business is unlikely to be profitable.

Article by Lucy Koch From eMarketer : In 2018, total worldwide app revenues grew 63% year over year, according to a March 2019 report from app commerce company Poq, based on data from the company's platform clients. Global time spent in shopping apps on Android devices grew to 18 billion hours in 2018, up 45% from two years prior, per a January 2019 report from app analytics platform App Annie. In the US, mobile shopping sessions grew 70% from 2016. Amazon's app ranked third for number of active users per month across both iPhones and Androids in 2018. The ecommerce powerhouse was the only retailer to make the top 10 apps in the US, trailing Facebook and Facebook Messenger. According to App Annie, time spent by US consumers in shopping apps and increasing digital sales had a strong positive correlation of 0.97 between Q1 2014 and Q3 2018—further exemplifying the importance of the user experience.

By Jim Moran From Bplans After spending years building your small business, it can be hard to quantify the time and energy you’ve poured into it and the sacrifices you’ve made to get where you are now. Your company probably seems priceless to you, but there inevitably will come a time when you must calculate precisely how much your business is worth. The value of your company is subjective. Buyers and sellers don’t always agree on what’s valuable and what isn’t, which is why hiring a valuation consultant or a CPA who has experience valuing businesses is a good idea. That said, it’s not overly difficult to come up with a reasonable ballpark valuation on your own—you’ll just need to avoid some of the common misconceptions first-time sellers have. In nearly every case, small businesses are bought and sold based on the cash flow they produce—with prices adjusted up or down to reflect other qualitative features. Rather than focusing only on cash flow, however, most intermediaries use ...

Article by Lucy Koch From eMarketing From their mailboxes to their mobile phones, shoppers look for coupons everywhere, but convenience is a must. For marketers, it’s important to provide consumers with discounts that are easy to find and use. Consumers across the board use physical and digital coupons, according to the survey, but a deeper dive into shopper behavior reveals nuances. Coupons—paper and paperless—are most popular among millennial parents (96%) and parents in general (95%). The general population of Gen Xers (93%) was close behind, followed by millennials (92%). Younger shoppers are more likely to use paperless coupons, with 88% of millennials indicating use vs. 83% of Gen Xers and 64% of baby boomers.