Erin Decker

What an amazing find, Erin. As COVID-19 has changed the dynamics of processes and operations for a number of companies, this seems like a natural fit – home delivery. However, the fact that they could be using driverless technology seems amazing. Just as we recently discussed Amazon Fresh stores without cashiers, this seems to be an innovation and growth area for companies.

Awesome post Erin! This would be a game changer, especially for folks who may not be able to get to the pharmacy easily. I’m sure the demand for prescription delivery is very high. It is also great that Nuro is no extra charge! I assumed there would be some cost tied to a delivery service like this. After your post I was interested in learning more about Nuro and found that the delivery window is expected to be within the hour of calling in the prescription. That is incredible.
I agree with you, having Nuro available during this pandemic would have been extremely helpful. I was happy to read that Nuro has been utilized during these last few months to deliver to food and medical supplies at temporary field hospitals in California in response to the COVID-19. I’m excited to see what’s to come in the future with this technology!

Great post Erin! Generally when I have a prescription ready for pickup at CVS, it takes at least 2 or 3 reminder texts to get me to pick it up – life is busy and it is easy to forget! Having a service like this would be a game changer, especially since there is no extra cost associated with it. Self driving car and truck technology is very interesting to me, and I think we will begin to see a prevalence of this technology over the next 5-10 years. Reading your post reminded me of an article I read last year about a startup company in Arizona that had partnered with UPS and had quietly been using self driving tractor trailer to deliver bulk mail shipments between two cities 120 miles apart. I think it is pretty cool that they had been doing this drive with relatively low publicity until they were able to say “we have been using self driving technology for months to make deliveries and no one noticed because everything has been going fine”.

Autonomous semi-trucks have been driving along I-10 for months and no one noticed

Nuro is a great find and would make an excellent addition to the case! What would the current process flow diagram look like with the introduction of Nuro?

Great informative article, Erin! I had no idea that Lyft is using self-driving cars already in Phoenix, I’d love to try one of those out myself. One of my favorite YouTubers has a Tesla, a self-driving car, and it’s crazy to watch him filming while driving, my first instinct is to be safe while driving & not use your phone but with the technology of self-driving cars, I guess it doesn’t matter as much. I wonder if the automation of driving will help cut back on accidents too, especially with tractor trailers. I’d love to see more driving automation if it helps cut back on traffic as well, especially living in the DC area!

That’s an interesting point that there might no longer be traffic in the age of self-driving cars. While I do enjoy the manual exercise of driving, it really is terrifying to think of how dangerous it is. It’s easy to just imagine the end result, in which all cars are at level 5 automation, so thinking about the transition brings up a lot of interesting issues. I hope the slow transition period brings increasingly safer transportation!

Great read, Erin! I think the idea of self-driving cars and the ability to help cut down traffic is very exciting! I don’t enjoy driving and I get very irritated when I have to drive long distances because I feel that my time could be better spent doing something else (e.g., reading or squeezing in a quick nap after work). Although rideshare apps are testing self-driving cars, I wonder if the emergence of self-driving cars that consumers own themselves would have any effect on rideshare profits. If consumers own self-driving cars, couldn’t they potentially be sleeping or intoxicated inside their own self-driving cars that would transport them to their destinations safely? Personally, if I owned a self-driving eco-friendly car, I wouldn’t see the need to use a ride-share service anymore as long as I was able to park the car safely and affordably upon arrival at my destination.

Great post, Erin! Studies have shown that there is also a financial benefit to having more gender diversity among decision-makers in business. A 2017 report by the Peterson Group, which examined more than 21,000 companies in 91 countries, found that companies with more than 30 percent female leadership can expect an improvement to their net margin of up to 6 percent.

Working in a state-funded university, we’ve been working on ways to inform and elevate our young female leaders to convince them that they belong in leadership. Only 37 percent of our business student population at UNI is female. This ratio causes issues as we try to provide the workforce with balanced gender representation. Although our Dean is committed to balancing the ratio to 50/50, we seem to be running out of time.

https://business.uni.edu/news-views/gender-games-women-are-still-fighting-equality-workplace

Great post, Erin! I agree, Jennifer Henley’s presentation really resonated with me (especially her anecdote about being asked to make dinner reservations and travel arrangements). I think there is still a lot of work to do in regard to gender inequality in the workplace, but I have hope. I saw a commercial over the weekend called She Can STEM which inspires middle school girls to stay in STEM by showcasing female role models (in this case from Boeing) across a variety of STEM fields. I thought it was very inspiring and influential.

I find it interesting that some of your colleagues who are entrenched in your organization are slowly moving off the grid. That is concerning and it could potentially change the landscape of marketing if that trend continues.

What if more people decide to go off the grid? I imagine that marketing would become traditional and messages would be more generic. Would it be so bad? Although I am often annoyed by advertising that is not personalized to my interests, I find the wide net approach refreshing because it means I don’t have a creeper watching my every move.

Erin, I can definitely share in your insights of using data for research and using it to make improvements. Working in higher education has opened my eyes as to how targeted advertisements are used, especially on LinkedIn and Facebook. At my job, we know how to target our audiences (prospective college students) through these social channels, as they gather your demographic and geographic information.



Consequently, how far is too far? In the past few years, there has always been the conspiracy theory that Facebook is listening to your conversations. Someone may discuss a product or service with another, face-to-face, and somehow the next day, advertisements are populating their newsfeeds pertaining to that same discussed topic. No matter how this is done or what algorithm is used, is this a huge invasion of our privacy and/or just downright creepy? Is Big Brother watching AND listening?

I feel like we’re still looking for that happy medium of how much data users will give up vs how much data digital marketers ask for. To Christina’s point, I have experienced that same scenario myself with my facebook newsfeed. It really does make me think my phone is listening. While it initially feels creepy, I don’t think I mind as long as it’s an algorithm listening. As a consumer, I would be concerned with human’s listening. In the article “Report: Amazon Employees Are Listening to Alexa Conversations” (https://news.wttw.com/2019/04/16/report-amazon-employees-are-listening-alexa-conversations), which includes a great video segment by the way, it describes how Amazon employees listen to random audio input from Alexa. This raises a whole new level of ethics, responsibility, liability and interpretation of what’s being said and how and why. It’s all complicated, that is for sure.

Thank you, Erin. Although it can often feel creepy almost to have apps and devices listening to or tracking consumers, I personally embrace that, especially it if it means making my on-the-go lifestyle or product suggestions (and means of acquiring them) more convenient.

I think this ties back to the Marketing in the Age of Alexa piece about consumers being willing to give up personal information, privacy, and sometimes even safety for convenience. That being said, I do think it generates a larger demand for organizations to increase their data security in-house or potentially partner with third parties to ensure that customer data remains safe and protected in order to build trust with consumers.

Human listing vs Algorithms listening is a very interesting point @Ralph! I do agree that I feel less “creeped” out when I hear or am “told” that instagram and facebook’s listening is done by algorithms however with the constant exposure of legal issues that google, facebook etc are being accused of, it makes me wonder if anything they say is trustworthy. However I know as a marketer and a consumer that I prefer customization on my feeds no matter the application. Its identifying that tipping point between privacy and preferences that is the constant dialogue in the ethical cases