The Costco Way: Ya Gotta Eat and Ya Oughta Hear
But ya don’t gotta see an audiologist to hear better, if you do it the Costco Way. That Way is putting pressure on the traditional medical model of hearing aid dispensing, which is under siege from all quarters — Big Boxes, Internet, PSAPs, OTC legislation, Hearables — and is not likely to sustain in its…
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Costco’s Business Model: Build It and They Will Come
Costco has enthusiastically embraced hearing aids as store-in-store revenue builders in all of its burgeoning warehouse locations since the mid-90s. The rate of Costco hearing aid center growth (feature image, red) has outstripped warehouse growth (blue) in recent years. Both are on fast tracks. Last Giant Standing, Building-Wise Costco’s Big Box footprint is…
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US Hearing Device Patents for November 2016
Sybaritic Pleasures: A Quick Econ 101 Primer On the Demand side, marketeers talk about creating and growing markets by identifying needs (e.g., hunger) and turning them into wants by creating products that offer more and more satisfaction (e.g., hamburgers, then caviar). Economists talk about growing demand by foreseeing consumer preferences across all possible goods which…
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Consumers, Consumers…Where art thou?
As part of our series on the influence of price on the hearing aid market, this week’s blog takes a closer look at the connection between price and adoption rates. Estimates of hearing aid adoption rates were first quantified back in the early 1970s, and are reported periodically as percentages. In 2014, Staab1 provided readers…
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Price Functions in the US Wholesale Hearing Aid Market
This series now steps into the dark and murky realm of manufacturers’ wholesale pricing of product to see how the market has changed since 2013. The caveats remain the same: Big assumptions: Categorical lines separating Economy, Premium, and everything in between are arbitrary to some extent, reflecting the varying family of products, product-specific technology levels,…
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