Word: fees
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...question is whether it's better to pass on that cost via a baggage surcharge, rather than a ticket price hike. In terms of consumer psychology, the bag option may indeed be the lesser evil. On ticket-buying websites, extra fees are often not quoted in the initial price displayed to customers - only later, as they're completing their purchase. Given the advantage airlines gain by scoring better in online searches, "a price increase is a far riskier decision than going with this type of fee," says Larry Compeau, a marketing professor at Clarkson University. As Seaney puts it: "Airlines...
...charging for bags carries its own risks, since the the new fee will be painfully apparent to flyers every time they check in. "They've done something that violates what consumers will be expecting," says Derek Rucker, an assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, "The lower price gets the consumer to you, but [the baggage fee] might leave a more bitter taste in their mouth...
...Delta say they are considering similar charges; Continental declined to comment on American's plan. Southwest Airline - one carrier that is feeling relatively less of the pain, having locked in 70% of its 2008 oil supply at $51 a barrel - said it had "no plans" to institute a bag fee. But even Southwest expects to pay $800 million more in fuel costs in 2008 than last year (compared to United's extimated $2 billion in extra costs). "Our fuel hedges have allowed us to remain profitable, compared to other carriers, but they don't provide full protection against escalating fuel...
...thing I hate: Buying music. I haven't bought a CD or MP3 for years. Instead, I subscribe to music - I pay a small monthly fee to Rhapsody and can access most of the world's music (more than 5 million songs) by streaming it via the Net to my home audio system. I can listen to just about any song I want, any time, anywhere. That's known, in the geekosphere, as "music dial tone...
...where's video dial tone? I'd love to subscribe to a service that gives me any TV show or movie I want, for a flat fee. But most of the services that tackle this problem want me to either "rent" downloadable video - typically for a day or two - or buy the bits outright. Products here range from Apple Computer's nifty Apple TV set-top box, which also connects to YouTube, and stores all your digital media in one handy place, to Vudu, whose sleek device connects your TV to a library of 6,000 films and TV shows...