After my last post around common misunderstandings of how medical schemes operate, I saw a Fin24 article on South African medical schemes that are below the required minimum solvency. What Fin24 readers had to say Nolulamo Matutu from Fin24 writes: Acting CEO of the CMA Patrick Matshidze told MPs 18 schemes have fallen below the…
photo credit: richardmasoner It’s been widely reported that the Competition Commission has been proving an alledged bicycle cartel. Retailers alledgedly agreed to increase prices to improve margins. This is not a strongly competitive market, which makes it quite an attractive market and good margins and profits should be available. photo credit: shareski Vodacom and Cell…
photo credit: pablo/T Chavez is promising to take over rice processing plants in Venezuela because they have been refusing to sell rice at the price set by government. Hyperinflation is starting to show it’s head, as a function of government policies around money supply. The article I referenced claimed that that is the reason for…
Moneyweb has an article describing the failure of the South African insurance industry to provide insurance to the wider population, including lower income markets such as the banking sector has done. There are some interesting points to discuss here, and I’m certainly not saying the industry could not do more. However, there are some fairly…
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an unfortunately necessary part of driving traffic to discover a website. Good content is necessary but not sufficient. Why SEO is necessary A large percentage of web traffic is directed by search engines. After all, this is how Google has become the giant company that it is. I tried to…
I was reading the comments on a recent blogpost on the freakonomics blog. Someone suggested (tongue firmly in cheek, I hope) that if libraries were invented today, copyright enforcement bodies (the DMCA was labelled directly) would hunt down anyone who tried to set one up. The comparison of the lending of books to the piracy…
Marketing is naively thought to be mostly art and very little science. While it is true that there is are elements of inspiration and creativity and passion involved, the balance of an effective strategic marketing role is heavily in favour of science. As a further point to consider, I put forward the proposition that much…
