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Harvey Norman franchising and the demise of good service

I went to Harvey Norman’s today, against my better judgement, since the last time I shopped there, I made poor purchasing decisions under the extremely persistent and persuasive sales pressure. I wanted to buy a desk lamp (Furniture), a camera cover (Electronics), some headphones and some blank DVDs (Computer). Having carefully selected all my items and carried them around the various sections, I went to the closest cashier (Computers) to pay. She saw my camera cover which was on top of the pile and said I would need to go to Electronics. I went to Electronics and my pile of goods piled up in a different order. This cashier said to go back to Computers for my computer items, and I would also have to go to Furniture to pay for my desk lamp. When I asked why I should have to go to different places to pay for different things within a single Harvey Norman store – surely they could track purchases on their computer system, I was told that actually each division was a separate franchise. I left my computer/electronics purchases at the cashier and went to Furniture to buy my desk lamp (which was the only thing I really needed). I was not very happy at this point and asked the Furniture people if I could speak to their manager to complain (no – not here on the weekend), and if not, could they give me a contact number (no – I could look it up myself).

Why am I writing about this? There are two main reasons. One is the demise of smaller specialty stores because big mega-stores can stock a wide range of things at lower prices. The other is that I find it offensive that, despite all the mantra about customer service, I need to know the internal structure of large organisations (like Optus, Harvey Normans, Westpac etc) to be able to interface with them effectively. They appear to operate as a single entity and apparently that is why I should go to them and trust them etc – but there are all sorts of things that I can’t do, or I have to go to a different department for, or get screwed up because the single organisation is not in fact a single organisation at all, but a whole lot of loosely affiliated systems that are unable or unwilling to communicate with each other. (An aside: I get regular mail from each division of Optus about the massive savings I’d get if I swapped my Landline, TV, Broadband or Mobile service to them – they are apparently oblivious to the fact that I already have these services with them)

To elaborate on small stores versus megastores: I make a conscious effort to shop at smaller, local stores where I can form a relationship with the people with whom I do business. The places I like to shop are specialty stores who stock a range of things selected by the expertise (and whim) of the store owner. I understand that smaller places may need to charge slightly higher prices because of things like buying power, but I also know that the people in the shop have decided what stock they will have to sell. I am perfectly aware when I step into or out of someone’s store and I know who is providing me goods and services at each store. If I get good service in the greengrocers, and bad service in the butchers next door, the butcher’s service does not impact on my assessment of the greengrocer. In contrast, any bad experience at a supermarket, whether it be with respect to groceries, deli items or meat, reflects badly on the whole supermarket.

The only times I go to places like Safeway or Kmart or Bunnings are when I want to shop efficiently for mundane consumables at a reasonable price. So back to my shopping experience at Harvey Normans. The store I went to is laid out like most department stores – open plan with no walls or doors between different departments. (Note: I’m there for shopping efficiency …) I collected my items – and there was nothing to indicate that I should plan to group my purchases according to department, and there are no indicators to alert me to the fact that I’ve taken one department’s goods into another department without paying for them. (Note: In a normal shopping mall, I go into one shop, buy my things, proceed to the next shop, buy my things and there are alerts if I attempt to take unpurchased goods from one store to another). I was not exactly thrilled at being told to go to different places to pay for different things (inefficiently retracing my steps around the store carrying all my purchases) and I asked what sense it made to have a Harvey Norman “store” rather than going to a regular shopping mall with different shops. The somewhat aggrieved Furniture guy (who could not give me a manager or a customer service number to complain to) then spouted the value of the Harvey Norman brand, number one retailer of this and that and the other thing …

As I left the store, I was thinking that the people working there in sales are just trying to make a living and probably don’t get paid enough to have to deal with the anger of frustrated customers – but I also got to thinking that Harvey Norman have gone a step beyond other “megastores” in depersonalising and cheapening the concept of brand and of service. They have taken the idea of a “megastore” (lots of stuff, good prices, efficient shopping) but implemented it as separate open-plan “shops” (inefficiency of going to different counters for different purchases). There is no sense of individuality, no sense of each section operating as a separate entity – it has all the bad points of shopping malls and none of the efficiency of supermarkets – and none of the individuality and charm of small suburban shopping strips. It was a bit sad to see that the Furniture guy had a strong brand loyalty and pride in working for Harvey Norman rather than for the individual owner of the individual franchise (who that person is I may never know … and maybe it isn’t a person – maybe it is a nameless investment entity). It was even more disturbing that he was offended by my not be impressed by the Harvey Norman name (apparently I should be honoured to be able to give HN my money …).

It seems that 20 years ago, the idea of a supermarket invoked images of uniformity of product, cheap prices and convenience but limited personal service. Now it seems that advertising is how we know what to buy (versus discussing things with a knowledgeable store owner), and good service means cheaper prices and not having to wait in line to pay rather than knowing about the goods being sold. Loyalty means getting purchasing rewards via cards (versus having the shop-owner actually know who you are and give you occasional freebies). The model of “best practice” and uniformity in shopping experience is now seen as something good and trustworthy, so that trust and loyalty is invested in brands rather than people and it is seen as riskier to go to a small local operator (might not be here next year) rather than a large brand name store (store will be around, albeit with different people).

And all this began with the microwave oven dying – I went to the local small electrical goods outlet that I’ve been to for the past 20 years to replace it rather than to possibly cheaper Harvey Normans for all the reasons above. Unfortunately they don’t stock desk lamps … if they did, I would not have wasted half the day writing about the demise of local shopping and customer service!

Maths + students = fail

This article from the ABC website documents the declining standard of maths from high school through to uni. Talk to students at schools trying to maximize their ENTER scores and start to understand that the way scores are calculated drives subject choices, rather than the actual relevance of the content …

(written on the iPhone … Not sure whether this is a good idea from an editing point of view …)

Building a Better Teacher

Building a Better Teacher ~ Stephens Web ~ by Stephen Downes.

Stephen comments on an article in the NY Times that claims great teaching can be taught, an issue of great interest to me and Stephen alike. In his comment (from which I declined to actually read the original article), Stephen suggests that the article is effectively a marketing blurb for a book by Doug Lemov, which in turn is promotion for his consultancy. When The NY Times implements its “subscription paywall”, this sort of book promotion will not be effective because the articles will no longer be widely distributed (many of the people who read the NY Times for free will not pay for the privilege). Stephen also notes that Lemov uses “unsurprising techniques” (ie nothing new or innovative) and there are no scholarly references to the “Lemov Taxonomy”.

I am interested in Stephen’s comments because there is subtext that jumps out at me:

1) Paywalls will discourage advertising masquerading as journalism. (Possibly a good thing about paywalls? Of course I won’t find out because I won’t pay …)

2) Where will newspapers get their pay-for content? (Implication that much of the content of newspapers is actual marketing / promotion. Can real journalism only be resurrected by making people pay to read?)

3) Lemov has no “scholarly references to it” – by which I presume Stephen means that Lemov is not cited by any papers in academic journals and that this reduces Lemoy’s credibility. I find this an interesting observation given the subtext in a lot of Web 2.0 discussion that the gate-keeping process of peer-reviewed academic journals creates an unnecessary monopolisitic constraint on the dissemination of new ideas.

Deep specialisation key to collaboration | The Australian

Couple Elizabeth Blackburn’s comments with the Climate Change Wars, and you start to see why “science” is getting a bad name. Add in the funding models over recent times (who pays for research) and it all starts getting even murkier.

NOBEL prizewinner Elizabeth Blackburn’s discoveries in molecular biology led her into cross-disciplinary research in cancer and chronic stress, but she warns that researchers first need deep specialist knowledge.As institutions are focusing on breaking down barriers to cross-disciplinary research, the University of California-based professor cautions there is a risk of researchers being shallow if they seek to generalise early.”My feeling is not to get too cross-disciplinary and shallow and spread all over the place too quick,” Blackburn tells the HES while visiting Monash University, where she is a distinguished visiting professor.”One needs to be able to bring something very substantive to the table because I can see the temptation would be to try to be overly generalised and shallowness would be the consequence.”

via Deep specialisation key to collaboration | The Australian.

Academic freedom of expression at The University of Melbourne

Standing Resolutions of Council – Chapter 4 – General Resolutions Including Protocols : The University of Melbourne.

seems to have been replaced by this during the “Policy simplification project”

It’s a sad reflection on Australian academia that this needs to be stated clearly, but it is refreshing that it has been. (and it’s a sad reflection on my writing that I no longer know what specific point was being made, due to the link no longer being active – note to self, make sure that writing of commentary includes the key point being identified!)

My Taekwondo blog …

It is more than two years since I wrote anything in my taekwondo blog – but not because there is nothing interesting to say. In the past two years I have learned so much more about technique and application and moral culture, and it has been an exciting and challenging time to be part of USMA. Apart from my own thoughts on taekwondo, I’ve been delighted to watch my daughter’s skills develop and was very proud that she represented Australia in Argentina in the World Championships. She just missed the medal round in patterns, and performed to the best of her ability in sparring – a great effort for her first international event.

The reason that my taekwondo blog has died is a sad reflection on taekwondo in Australia – too much politics, not enough technique / application, and a seeming abyss of moral culture. To write anything about taekwondo, to question any technique, to reflect on good and bad aspects of the art form, to consider the relationship between a Korean martial art developed in a military context and modern Australian cultural context – all these are political minefields with people searching for disrespect or subversion or technical error in every utterance, rather than looking for a way forward and an open exchange of ideas to build on the wonderful foundation created by General Choi and bring it to people of all walks of life, including women and children.

When the administration of taekwondo is more about building individual business interests than serving the students of taekwondo (giving back to taekwondo in the form of leadership and instruction), the moral culture at the core of the martial art is destroyed. There will always be a very difficult path to tread through the democratic legal framework for Not-for-profit Associations versus the Dan hierarchy of a martial art, and the only way to negotiate a path through this is through plenty of discussion around common goals. Of course this is almost impossible if there are no common goals, and most parties have the goal of exerting maximum power with minimum input.

So rather than writing a whole lot of stuff about the exciting things that I’ve learned through training taekwondo with Sabum Cariotis and sharing my passion for a martial art with other people who might have thought of starting but did not know whether it would be okay for them (e.g., too old, too unfit, too inflexible, wrong demographic etc), I don’t write anything at all. It is a real shame, because so much of the way I think in my own professional area of cognitive science and spatial coding has been heavily influenced by my martial arts training. My discussions with Sabum Cariotis on space, time, temporal sequencing of movements, trigger points, options and decision-making have triggered all sorts of ways of understanding spatial coding, and I have also learned so much about cognitive aspects of training for expert skilled performance through watching Sabum Cariotis instruct and learning how to instruct martial arts under his guidance.

I have to say also that my eLearning blog has also died somewhat because of similar issues – universities are also becoming more focused on their business interests than on their core mission of community service through generating and sharing knowledge and understanding. I work for a specific institution and my academic output belongs to this institution as part of their “intellectual property” … such a strange concept, that “intellectual property” has a life of its own outside of any individual’s own intellect. It would be an interesting exercise to force university managers (and taekwondo practitioners) to study enough philosophy of mind to have a view of what constitutes knowledge (or skilled performance) and whether or not it can exist independently of the mind (or body) which is using it …

Doctor and Patient – Looking Beyond MCATs to Pick Future Doctors – NYTimes.com

Doctor and Patient – Looking Beyond MCATs to Pick Future Doctors – NYTimes.com.

The investigators found that the results of the personality test had a striking correlation with the students’ performance. Neuroticism, or an individual’s likelihood of becoming emotionally upset, was a constant predictor of a student’s poor academic performance and even attrition. Being conscientious, on the other hand, was a particularly important predictor of success throughout medical school. And the importance of openness and agreeableness increased over time, though neither did as significantly as extraversion. Extraverts invariably struggled early on but ended up excelling as their training entailed less time in the classroom and more time with patients.

It is interesting to see that the personality factors leading to long term future success are different from those leading to short-term “success”. Failure to consider progress over the whole training continuum is becoming a serious “quality” issue in education. The need to enforce more rigorous standards early in training to prepare students for later training is difficult to do when evaluation is at the wrong granualarity. (Note to self: look up the Belgian study from which the data were reported)

Science

I’ve been reading lots of Oliver Sacks over Christmas – reinforcing my view that the foundation of scientific study is observation. He provides this quote in the preface of “An anthropologist on Mars” which is itself from G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown:

Science is a grand thing when you can get it; in its real sense one of the grandest words in the world. But what do these men mean, nine times out of ten, when they use it nowadays? When they say detection is a science> When they say criminology is a science> They mean getting outside a man and studying him as if he were a gigantic insect; in what they would call a dry impartial light; in what I should call a dead and dehumanised light. They mean getting a long way off him, as if he were a distant prehistoric monster; staring at the shape of his “criminal skill” as if it were a sort of eerie growth, like the horn on a rhinoceros’s nose. When the scientist talks about a type, he never means himself, but always his neighbour; probably his poorer neighbour. I don’t deny the dry light may sometimes do good; though in one sense it’s the very reverse of science. So far from being knowledge, it’s actually suppression of what we know. It’s treating a friend as a stranger, and pretending that something familiar is really remote and mysterious. It’s like saying that a man has a proboscis between the eyes, or that he falls down in a fit of insensibility once every twenty-four hours. Well, what you call “the secret” is exactly the opposite I don’t try to get outside the man, I try to get inside.

I have particularly enjoyed reading “Uncle Tungsten”, his memoirs of his childhood, where he had the freedom to do curiousity-driven research despite all the potential risks, thereby gaining a much deeper understanding of the world, and a thirst for knowledge gathered through detailed observation and reflection as well as through careful experimentation.