What Can Amazon Product Managers Do About The Customers They Don’t Have?

As product managers, we spend a great deal of our time trying to figure out ways to get more people to buy our products. However, there is that very small collection of product managers who have extremely popular products who have a slightly different sort of problem that they have to work out. They really … Read more

Is Offering Private Label Brands A Good Move For Amazon?

By now we all know Amazon as the gigantic online store that sells just about everything. However, what a lot of us may not realize is that, depending on where you live, Amazon has expanded their product development definition to sell food. Lots of food. The product managers over at Amazon are under pressure to … Read more

Is It Time For Amazon’s Product Managers To Go Back To College?

Let’s face it, Amazon is a very big company that has done a lot of things correctly. We all know that we can visit their web site, pick out something that we want and almost magically it’s going to show up at our door in just a few days. All of this success has put … Read more

Should People Be Able To Purchase Groceries Online?

For most of us, going to the grocery store is a once-a-week or so activity. We make a list of what we think we’ll need, get in the car, do our shopping, come home and then put everything away. However, since we now live in the 21st Century it turns out that there is a … Read more

Product Managers’ Customers Are Now Shopping Online

The times they are a changing. As product managers it is our responsibility to stay on top of trends that are affecting our customers. One very important trend is just exactly how our customers are going about buying things. In the old days, customers would decide that they needed something, get in their car and … Read more

Solving The Challenge Of Making Reordering Products Simple And Easy

So here’s an interesting question for you: when you customer uses up or runs out of your product, how do they go about ordering more from you? Perhaps this question would be better stated “how hard is it to order more of your product?” If you can put yourself in your customer’s shoes for just … Read more

How Can A Product Manager Bring A Bookstore Back From The Dead?

As a product manager, one of the things that we like the best is taking on a challenge. However, there has to be a least a chance that we can be successful. If someone came to you and asked you to make a book store become successful in this day and age, would you take … Read more

What Would You Do If Walmart Turned Off Your Gas?

I seem to recall that there is a type of fish that attaches itself to sharks, I think that it’s called a remora. This fish then gets access to all of the leftovers when the shark feeds. Not a bad relationship, eh? In the U.S. gas station business, there is a company called Murphy USA … Read more

Oracle Product Managers Get Ready To Battle Amazon In The Cloud

I’m pretty sure that by now you’ve heard about “the cloud” – it’s the mythical place where companies can get their programs to run and their data to be stored in such a way that they don’t have to buy any computers or storage systems. Another company takes care of all of the day-to-day activities … Read more

Amazon Product Managers Prepare To Do The Unthinkable: Open A Store

You would think that being a product manager who works for Amazon would be a pretty cushy job right? The company operates one of the largest online stores and they don’t seem to have to generate a profit and investors still seem to love their stock. However, all of this success may hid a key … Read more