It s the mystery of the medicine cabinet, the case of the indelible stain. Shoppers, after all, are employed and happy.
Consumer confidence is up, and sales of big-ticket items such as automobiles and homes are strong.
The companies that are succeeding have stuck to nurturing their brands. The laggards, he says, have often gone for short-term earnings rather than spend on the promotion and advertising they need to thrive. You need cash flow to leverage strong brand names. That starts by first improving internal operating efficiency in order to generate cash flow to reinvest behind the brand with ads, promotion, and new product development. The more of that you do, the higher your product volumes and the greater your earnings, which means that you have more money to put to work in wooing more customers.