Small Businesses Turn to The Barter Economy During Recession

Small Businesses and Bartering Networks

During the last few weeks, mainstream media published articles discussing the use of barter by companies unable to obtain business loans or by those seeking to more proactively manage cash flows.  Given the almost universal use of currency, barter exchanges might at first pass seem rather antiquated.  But they most certainly are not.  More than 400 barter networks operate in the United States and Canada.  Citing research complied by the National Association of Trade Exchanges (NATE), BusinessWeek reported these exchanges conduct greater than $4 billion in transactions annually.  Yes, that’s right $4 billion in barter transactions annually.  Barter it would seem, is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The Coming Commercial Real Estate Implosion

As the new year approaches, uncertainty looms over the economy. Where 2008 has been the year of home owner foreclosures, recent data suggests that 2009 may be full of commercial real estate concerns. An Associate Press report from a few weeks back suggested that commercial offices and shopping malls would be among the biggest players to feel the pinch:

The 2009 outlook for the commercial real estate sector has turned suddenly bleak. Rents and vacancies at shopping centers and office buildings will suffer the most, but industrial buildings and apartments won’t be immune to the downdraft….Worse still, about $36 billion of commercial real estate debt will expire next year, and about $55 billion of debt on average will roll over annually by 2012.

A recent report covered by the New York Times now suggests that this number will be even higher:

Now a New York research company, Real Capital Analytics, has compiled data showing that at least $107 billion worth of income-producing property — including hotels, offices, apartment complexes and warehouses — is already in distress or is headed in that direction.

Grow Your Small Business During a Recession

I don’t need to tell you that this is a tough economic environment and that relief appears to be a ways away.  Indeed, the Market Oracle is calling this the worst recession since World War II.  There’s no doubt that many businesses are going to get hit pretty hard before things get better.  So given these tough times, what can businesses to do to stay afloat or even get ahead?

Enhancing your Business Blog with Customer Comments: Trends

One of the great business benefits of writing a blog is its ability to establish a repertoire with consumers. While the relationships is typically one sided with most consumers simply reading the content, many will participate in a community dialog by leaving comments. Comments are valuable in such that they garner insight into your customer-base and create a sense of community: many viewers will respond to comments left by others. As a result, people keep coming back to your site to interact with like minded consumers.

Given the value comments can add to a blog-based marketing platform, it is worthwhile to consider why people leave comments and how commenting can be encouraged. While we’ll delve into specific tactics that yield customer comments in a future post, Nick Halstead of fav.or.it aggregated some interesting comment related statistics that speak volumes about commenter behavior.

The Bass Model & Forecasting Product Adoption (Part II)

This is a continuation of the previous post.

Estimating m, p, q
Accuracy of the Bass Model relies heavily upon the modeler’s estimation of m (the market size), p (the “coefficient of innovation” and q (the “coefficient of imitation”). Because determining these values is a rather arduous task, anyone constructing a Bass Model typically looks to analogous products. In the previous post we suggested that the iPod’s analogous products included portable radios, walkmans, and portable CD players. This is quite literally, prediction by analogy, and this is precisely why it fails for the truly novel. (personal note: for the hackers out there, this is a bit like proving a problem is NP-Complete by reducing it to another previously proven NP-Complete problem.)

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