Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 August 2

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August 2

Many people hate to fly. Where did the commercial shipping lines go?

I'm not the only one who hates flying. Even if 1% dislikes it as much as I do there must be millions of people who will not see their grandchildren, cannot attend a wedding, will never see the beauty of New York or Amsterdam just because the only way to get there is by plane.

How come I can't find a company that's not selling a nice 23 day cruise but instead offers a 3 day trip to travel between Amsterdam and New York by boat? Joepnl (talk) 03:09, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Just a note. It's more than just a fear of flying to take into consideration. One has to figure out how many people would be so afraid of flying as to put up with three days in a boat. Then the shipping company would have to find enough of those people who can cover the cost of a regularly scheduled trip. That aside, if it's a multi-port cruise that you're trying to avoid, you might want to look into getting a cabin on a cargo ship. They are available though the accommodations, from what I've read, are not the best. Dismas|^(talk) 03:32, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Let's toss some numbers out there. There are about 40 flights per day between London and New York. These are planes with perhaps 150 passengers aboard, so the total traffic is about 6000 people per day. So if 1% of them give up flying (as our OP suggests) - then you have around 60 people per day wishing to go to London by ship. A modern transatlantic liner holds perhaps 2000 people - but if only 60 per day wish to sail, then they could only fill up a ship once every 33 days...and that presumes that our 1%'ers are prepared to wait a month to make their trip. But it's worse than that...the ship only takes 6 or 7 days to cross the atlantic and come back again. So is the ship to be idle for three weeks out of every month? Clearly that's untenable. It would have to sail to other destinations too...but this gets complicated and expensive.

Cruise-liners can only do their business by attracting people from a wider pool. If there were just a couple of liners going back and forth and ALL of the people in the entire USA who wished to travel to London were to come to New York to take a boat - then maybe there would be a workable business model...but how do you cross the entire continent to get to the boat without flying? Trains? Those take a week to get across the continent. So now, to visit London, you might need a week in a train, three days in a boat, and the same back again. If you want even one week in London, you'll have to take an entire month of vacation!

People who want to take a cruise these days very often fly to where the boat is.

One answer would be smaller boats - but those are less comfortable, more expensive to run, altogether a bad idea.

Many people hate to fly - but they also want to get from A to B quickly. They have to balance the misery of (say) an 8 hour flight over the Atlantic with the benefit of not losing three days of their valuable vacation time stuck aboard ship. In most cases, the calculus comes out in favor of a short amount of misery versus a much longer period of milder inconvenience. Obviously there are some people who simply refuse to fly at all - but they are evidently much fewer in number and presumably insufficient to cause huge numbers of transatlantic ships to be constructed.

SteveBaker (talk) 06:10, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Also, the premise that a ship would make the crossing in 3 days is mistaken. New York to Amsterdam is 3,643 miles by air according to this source, and since a ship would have to go around England and eastern Canada, it would longer by sea, at least 3,800 statute miles or 3,300 nautical miles. To cover 3,300 nautical miles in 3 days (72 hours), the ship would have to go 3,300/72 = almost 46 knots. There might be some warships where fuel cost is not seen as an issue that could reach speeds like that, and certainly there are small boats and hydrofoils that can. But to cross the open sea you need a big ship or every encounter with waves will be hellish. Nobody ever made ocean liners that went so fast; the fuel costs would prevent them ever making a profit.Compare some actual speed records here. --69.158.94.114 (talk) 08:35, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

The record (and holder of the Blue Riband), was set by the liner SS United States in 1952 at 3 days and 12 hours, an average of 34.5 knots. Note that this was from Bishop Rock, Isles of Scilly, well off the western tip of the British mainland, to the Ambrose Light in Lower New York Bay, thus excluding the lengthy process of getting in and out of port and negotiating the busy shipping lanes of the English Channel, so you could probably add a couple of days to that time. You can still cross the Atlantic from Southampton to New York on the RMS Queen Mary 2. It takes 9 nights and costs from GBP 800 including a flight back again.[1] Alansplodge (talk) 16:22, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

As someone who hates to fly, I have to correct the idea that it's always a fear of flying. I'm not afraid, I just hate it. I hate being packed in like sardines next to strangers. I hate getting leg cramps from the tight seats. I hate not being able to control the temperature. I hate not being able to use my cell phone or laptop. I hate going through security. I hate waiting in lines. I hate airline food. I hate being nickeled and dimed to death with hidden charges. I hate having to rent a car when I arrive at my destination. I hate that they often lose your checked luggage and severely restrict what you are allowed to carry on. I hate that I can't take many items with me that I normally carry, like a Swiss army knife. I chose to drive between Los Angeles and Detroit regularly rather than fly. That's a 3-4 day drive, BTW, which should give you an idea for how much I hate flying.

I've never been abroad (and never been a broad, either), except for Canada, which I can drive to. Part of the reason I don't choose to travel the world is the thought of all those painful plane trips. StuRat (talk) 01:26, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

There seems to be 2 ways to cross the Atlantic by sea on a commercial operation:

1. Travel by the QM2. It takes 9 days and costs over $1400 one way. You get a lot of room but you still have to share the ship with 2,500 strangers (plus 1,200 crew); your phone and laptop might work in port, but mid-Atlantic you would have to use very expensive on-board communications services; you still have to wait in line at security and at maybe at dinner too; you are expected to tip the crew and are probably gouged for expensive shipboard goods; and you will still have to rent a car when you arrive unless you make use of the excellent public transport services. You will probably get good service and all the entertaiment you can take.

2. Travel by cargo ship. It takes several days and is not as cheap as you might imagine - still hundreds of dollars. You get more room but you still have to share the mostly empty ship with the crew and whatever other passengers there are aboard; your phone and laptop might work in port, but mid-Atlantic you would have to use very expensive on-board communications services if they are available; you still have to wait in line at security and you will probably be restricted in you access to large areas of the ship; and again you will still have to rent a car when you arrive unless you make use of the excellent public transport services once you get out of the port. At least you might be able to be left alone to read or look at the horizon without the service of an "entertainment manager".

Of course, you could always buy your own boat. Alternatively, if you don't intend to fly except on very rare occasions, why not upgrade to business or first and take all the extras they hand out - much more room on board, priority through security and boarding, better food (still not great though) and a free bar and relish the free time away from phone and laptop. True thay can still lose you luggage, but so can cruise/cargo lines. Astronaut (talk) 13:34, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Are you ever forced to hand over your luggage on a ship ? If not, they will have a hard time losing it, unless somebody breaks into your cabin and outright steals it. And a laptop is still useful to me without the internet. I can play games, edit documents, write programs, watch movies, etc. StuRat (talk) 05:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's a shame that we're not using passenger airships. I'm not sure of the commercial pro's and con's - but it just seems like a great way to cover large distances. The security lines and food quality problems would still be there, so would the "out of communication range" issues and the "renting a car at the other end" problem. But those are 100% inevitable if the price is being kept reasonable. But at least there ought to be less space issues, and (since the craft can fly quite low) some spectacular views along the way. Speed would be intermediate between airline and cruise ship...which sounds reasonable. SteveBaker (talk) 15:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Fear of flying might extend to balloons. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:46, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Also, the small capacity of ship like the LZ 129 Hindenburg might be a limiting factor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:09, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't treatment for the phobia of flying be a good option? HiLo48 (talk) 21:04, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Business strategy?

Hey folks. I'm not a business major so I don't know if what I'm about to report is normal or unusual, but I though I would ask if anyone has ever heard of it. I've been patronizing a few different convenience stores for the past decade or so, and I've noticed an unusual pattern that to me at least, rises above coincidence and looks to me like a business strategy of some kind. What I've observed is this: certain products in several stores sell off the shelves. In some cases, these stores have trouble keeping them stocked because they either don't maintain a good inventory or don't have a good, reliable distributor. But that's not what this report is about. What I've noticed is in some cases, the store will stop carrying a best-selling product and replace it with a similar, but different product. When asked why this is, they give several explanations, such as "our distributor stopped carrying it" or "that product has been discontinued". What's so strange about this, is that the stores down the road all have the same product and distributor. So the product hasn't been discontinued nor has the distributor stopped carrying it. I did some more investigation into this, and it appears that product inventory is not being driven by sales, but by a decision made by a central office in another geographical location. What's going on is that they seem to be identifying a need (for example "grape juice"), but then deliberately discontinue the product that's selling and replace it with a different, but similar product. This seems very odd to me, and there's only two stores that I know of that do this. In other words, they are trying to control what the consumer purchases rather than catering to and providing a service to the consumer. It's probably not a coincidence that they've replaced the product with a more expensive version, intending to increase their profit. But this just drives people like me away, and now I travel an extra mile to get the product that I want. Can anyone explain this strange business practice? Viriditas (talk) 04:01, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, if you can sell X quantity of a product with $Y profit - or X/2 quantity of a different product with 2x$Y profit, then you probably want to go with the second option because it leaves you with more shelf space and your sales staff have less work to do in restocking shelves, ringing things up at the register, etc. However, some of these stores have very complex agendas. Maybe they're selling something at a loss in order to get you into the store...or maybe they have a manufacturer that says "If you want to stock 'WonderGoop 2000' (a very popular product) then you have to stock 'BlahBlahStuff' that nobody much likes."...this happens to a huge extent in car dealerships. Here in Texas, where pickup trucks are popular, some dealerships are rationed and can only sell one pickup for every two cars (or something like that). If your local store is part of a chain, then you may be seeing "test marketing" where they try to figure out what people will and won't buy. SteveBaker (talk) 05:43, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's a combination of the two scenarios you mentioned. What confuses me is that they seem to be targeting popular products, "discontinuing" them, and then replacing them with items that nobody buys. And now I'm thinking the reason is because of the second option you mention; if they want to stock x then they have to stock y, which isn't popular. Seriously, this is the kind of thing that really turns off a customer and forces them to go elsewhere. This is really bad business. They're not just losing the money I would have spent on that one item, but all the other items I usually buy along with it. I'm seeing this kind of thing more and more, where stores carry items nobody wants and stop stocking the things that sell. To me, this doesn't make any kind of sense and I'm going to make more of an effort now to spend my money in places that put the customer's needs over and above the bean counters sitting in an office several thousand miles away. Viriditas (talk) 09:12, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a clever variation of the old "bait and switch".   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 18:29, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

How do you know the stores down the road have the same distributor for these specific products? It seems rather weird that you'd know this, since stores don't generally reveal the potentially complex array of distributors they use. (It seems even more weird if the store in question is some kind of chain big enough to have someone in a different geographical location making the decision that you'd know who the distributor of that product to that specific store is. In fact, it's easily possible that the distributor of the product to that store is so division of the chain owner themselves, although it may be delivered to the store by someone else like whoever sells it to the chain division. And are you sure it's a chain not a franchise of some sort?)

In any case, what others have said is important. SKU management is complicated. Clearly customer demand is one component, but there are a lot of other things which will be considered like profit, shelf space, supplier performance, relationship with the supplier, linked SKUs etc. As others have said, even these factors may be complicated since the cost of the item is probably not simple with rebates, sale quantities, special prices, unwanted stock terms and other stuff coming in to play.

Also to state the obvious, the fact that one customer is willing to go out of their way to get the other product is pretty meaningless to the store, unless your a very major purchaser and represent 5% of their profits or something.

Nil Einne (talk) 18:56, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

There's nothing weird at all about how I know this, as there is only one distributor of the product on the island where I live, and they signed an exclusive agreement with the manufacturer. And there's nothing complex about this at all, it's actually very simple. The store is lying to their customers about their products because they are at the mercy of a product war between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, and they are limiting the choice of the consumer based on their pathetic little war. It's almost as annoying as editors who put their sig on a separate line. Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

But why do you believe the store is getting them directly from this exclusive distributor? An exclusive distribution deal generally only implies that they will only sell directly to one company in whatever geographical area the deals covers. There's usually nothing stopping this exclusive distributor selling the products to multiple wholesalers who then onsale them to the store.

Again I don't see why you believe you know all about the potentially complicate nature of distribution chains for this particular product in your particular locale. Further more, I believe you are in the US. The US has some rather odd laws, and doesn't seem as strong on such issues as a number of countries like Australia and New Zealand. But still outside of certain products like licenced copyright products, medicines, and similar products with a complicated regulatory approach like medicines, AFAIK there are only few legal restrictions on parallel importation or distribution, particularly parallel importation or distribution within the United States.

For a chain store in particular, but also a franchise, it's easily possible the chain or franchise owner will have their own company who buys products and either distributes or on sells them to the store as I mentioned before. They may do so even to whatever island you live on. The "exclusive distributor" may not be particularly happy about a chain or franchise bypassing them, but they may not be able to do anything about it legally depending on the precise terms of their exclusive agreement which it's quite unlikely is publicly known. (Or to put it in earlier terms, while the manufacturer or whoever is selling the product to the distributor should ideally avoid selling the product to people elsewhere who are going to onsell in to the area covered by the deal precisely how well this is covered by the contract will vary.)

Even without legal recourse, they can of course do other things like put pressure on the manufacturer to get the chain owner or franchise owner to stop bypassing them (particularly if it's the same manufacturer) or refuse to supply the store themselves with any products, but their willingless to do so, and their ability to have an effect will depend on various things like the relative powers and sizes of each company.

To give an example, since you mentioned Pepsico and Coca-cola (as well as chains), if either company is distributing products to Walmart or a Walmart subsidiary who then supply their own stores directly in some cases, there's probably little some small distributor in some random island can do to stop it. (Even a distributor on Hawaii who I presume would be the most significant chain of islands in the US in terms of market share, is probably not big enough that Pepsico or Coca-cola would put them ahead of Walmart. Walmart is probably a bit more vunerable to pressure from this distributor due to their operations in Hawaii, but probably not that much that they'd be willing to stop bypassing said distributor unless they end up with a better overall deal. Particularly if they do have a widescale internal distribution network.) If the effect of this is enough to destroy the advantages of this exclusive deal, they may not want to continue it in the future. OTOH, if they're still locking in 80% of the market, it's likely they'll accept those bypassing them as a necessary loss. (Of course, it's still likely to affect the terms they're willing to accept for the exclusive deal).

Again I'm not saying that any of this is happening, simply that unless you are intimately involved in such dealings, it's fairly unlikely you know the precise details of the distributions agreements for every single product in your store. And the information you've provided gives us no reason to think you know the details for whatever product you are referring to. Definitely it doesn't sound you have much idea how the retail market works, in fact you seem to admit that despite then claiming to know the precise distribution details for a certain product and refusing to accept that there could be a lot of complexities you don't know about because business relationships are often complicated and a lot of the details are rarely discussed in public.

(Note that I never said that the store wasn't misleading you, simply that you seem to be convinced of something when you have insufficient evidence to be.)

I put my signature on a seperate line because I find it a lot less confusing when I use multiple paragraphs. I find it less confusing to use multiple paragraphs when I make long posts, and furthermore, I do it more now because people who's opinion matters much more than User:Viriditas to me like User:JackofOz have asked me to do so. Heck even User:Medeis, who's opinion I don't really care that much about but to be frank still more than yours, has asked me to use more paragraphing. Of course they've also asked me to reduced the length of my posts, but that's a step to far for me....

Nil Einne (talk) 09:37, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Anyone know where the "off" button is on this guy? Nil Einne, you've passed the Turing test. Congrats. Viriditas (talk) 03:42, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I bet it's a large chain that discontinued the popular products. This can happen because it's popular in your area, but not as popular nationally, or internationally, and a decision was made at corporate HQ to discontinue it. See Diseconomy of scale#Isolation of decision makers from results of their decisions. Incidentally, I've seen exactly the scenario you describe, where Meijer stopped carrying Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice herbal tea, despite it regularly selling off the shelf, and replaced it with some other tea that doesn't seem to sell as well. Walmart, a mile down the street, still sells Bengal Spice. StuRat (talk) 01:12, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much! That is exactly the article I was looking for here. I owe you one... Viriditas (talk) 02:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. BTW, I wrote that article. StuRat (talk) 03:21, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Just to add a little intrigue to this... I often question local chain supermarkets about the placement/removal of products (often my favourite products) on their shelves and have been told many things. Besides the frequent, "we have no control over this" or "it's head office's decision", one store said that the manufacturer has paid them to place a (new) product thus replacing a rival manufacturer's product. If a store is receiving what are effectively bribes to replace manufacturer A's product with manufacturer B's very similar product (similar in quality, quantity and price), then it is win for the supermarket and there is a chance the buying public might like it too. Astronaut (talk) 13:52, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's the counterargument. The problem I have with it is that it's not consumer-driven, which to me reflects an old school business practice. This is one of the reasons Millennials are divesting from the big companies and supporting artisanal products. If the big companies want to keep losing money, then they should keep pushing this antiquated, top-down product placement model because younger people aren't putting up with it. Viriditas (talk) 18:42, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree. I can't imagine many people say "My favorite product is no longer carried by this store, so I'll just take whatever is on the shelf now". That's not how people think. And if you can find your favorite product at a nearby store (which is easier now because most manufacturers have web sites that will direct you to stores that carry their products), you may buy more than just that product there, you may switch all your shopping over. So taking a bribe is rather short-sighted, as they aren't considering the total cost. It's just bad economics. StuRat (talk) 04:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

How to perform well

[Header added for clarity]

How to perform well in exam and class fluently? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.126.0.36 (talk) 18:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

See Study skills and Learning for our relevant articles. The quick answer to your question is, unfortunately, "hard work" - there's no miraculous method of achieving success in any field without it. Tevildo (talk) 18:43, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Also smart work. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:03, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Or academic dishonesty, if that wasn't what you meant by "smart work". InedibleHulk (talk) 01:13, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

The way you worded the Q makes me think English is a second language for you. If your classes are taught in English, then you might benefit from improving your English skills first. StuRat (talk) 00:58, 3 August 2014 (UTC)