One of the most important things marketers know: Selling to existing customers is much less expensive than attracting new customers. Why haven't cell phone companies picked up on this yet? They spend all their money giving new phones and cheap plans and specials to attract new customers. Yet they do nothing to keep their current customers happy. Because of this, they lose all their current customers, who switch to a different company every few years because of "new customer incentives." Maybe cell phone companies should change their focus and try to maintain current customers and decrease their marketing/promotions budget.

Back to the restaurant industry idea:
I recently wrote a paper on the restaurant industry. I did some searches and discovered an excellent point. Baby boomers might be the key to a turn around in the restaurant industry. Everyone knows that opening a restaurant is one of the most risky entreprenuership ventures you can dare to try. I'm not sure on the exact statistic, but I want to say that between 80%-95% of restaurants fail in their first year. It's been this way for years. I think this is going to change within the next ten years and heres why... baby boomers are retiring. Today in class we studied different generations and how to market to them. We learned about the baby boomers - the generation that is dying to spending money and willing to pay for high quality. Senior citizens are already well known for being the best restaurant customers, but when you throw in the generation boomer factor, they become ideal customers for upscale restaurants. This customer group will continue to grow as the boomers retire and begin spending the big bucks to eat out. They care about quality and they are willing to pay A LOT for it. If the restaurant industry can learn to cater to this new target audience (retired baby boomers) I think the restaurant industry could experience a drastic turn around.

I just got out of a class with guest speaker, Amy Reese Lewis, the CEO of MediConnect Global. She was amazing and gave me a new perspective on the business world. She took a company that was loosing money and turned it into the one of the leading companies in medical record retrieval. Her success story is amazing. She was recently featured in BusinessWeek and voted one of the top 40 business women. The great part about her story was the company she saved. They had the perfect technology and resources. The only thing they lacked was a corporate strategy. She saw the simple solution to their strategy problem and made the company do a complete 180. It's amazing what a little strategy and planning will do. And her biggest advice... put your family first no matter what.

Hi everyone. My name is Jamie and this is my senior year as a business management/marketing student and Brigham Young University. I plan to work in marketing for a few years and then open my own restaurant. Obviously, the restaurant industry is a very risky business to get in to. Any advice?