This blog covers two subjects: the first deals with cash cows and the second deals with brick stores versus digital stores.
The subject that got me inflamed was the cold weather in San Francisco, which led me to seek an electric mattress pad for my bed. I am wimpy enough to want to get into a warm bed.
I went to look for an electric mattress pad that could be turned on automatically an hour before I get in bed and an hour so after it would automatically be turned off.
The problem I found at the brick-and-mortar store, was that none of the electric mattress pad boxes had adequate information on the outside of the box to tell me how I could deal with the automatic on-off button.
There is a simple reason that the box information was so inadequate. The big companies that still have their labels on electric blankets from General Electric to Cannon to Sunbeam, all treat the electric blanket as a cash cow. The manufacturing is in China.
The money just rolls in even when the parent company ignores it entirely.This is a common fate for cash cows in the corporate world. The consequence is that a cash cow that might last 15 or 20 years by being ignored could last 40 years with some marketing attention.
Marketing attention means doing marketing research and adjusting the product to adapt to changing consumer needs and distribution channels. Brick stores need boxes with much more technical information on the outside.
Back to me. I took home the best blanket box I found and opened it to find that it didn't have any automatic clock nor did the on-off button lend itself to use on an automatic timer in the electric line. I returned it and ordered from Amazon.
The Amazon technical details were more than adequate to let me know that the on-off switch really would stay on and be controlled by a automatic clock in the electric line.
What surprised me was that none of the electric blankets or electric mattress pads had automatic timers on them.
It looks to me like nobody's doing marketing research. I asked half a dozen friends, and they all want their electric blankets to be on automatic timers.
Post script: pad not sold with model in photo.