[95626] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Reward-No.194515245723 - Please Claim Your $50-Costco Bonus-Right Away.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CostcoBonus)
Fri Feb 17 12:56:25 2017
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2017 10:58:11 -0700
From: CostcoBonus <CostcoBonus@onlinelatestmemberspecials.com>
Reply-To: CostcoBonus@onlinelatestmemberspecials.com
To: mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu
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<td id="First">Your Costco-Points are About to-Expire!</td>
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<center><a href="http://newpoints.onlinelatestmemberspecials.com"><img src="http://see1.onlinelatestmemberspecials.com" width="337" height="185" alt=""></a></center></td>
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<td id="Next1"><p>Hello mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu,</p>
<p>At Costco, customer-satisfaction is our top-priority and we want to know what you thought about your recent-experience shopping at Costco.</p>
<p>There is a $50-RewardCard available to you right now for answering a few brief-questions...but this bonus will-expire in the next 48-hours if you do not respond.</p>
<p>Please go below now and answer this short-survey...it will only take a few second.</p>
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<span style="font-weight: bold"><a href="http://newpoints.onlinelatestmemberspecials.com">Go Here & Redeem Your Costco-Bonus Points-Now</a></span></p></td>
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<p>You can-quit these memberads-if you'd rather-by <a href="http://xert2.onlinelatestmemberspecials.com">going here</a>.</p>
<p>=2885 Sanford Avenue - SouthWest#40442.<br>
Grandville_Michigan.<br>
ZIPCODE: #49418.</p>
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<p>You would never guess by looking at it that the eerily quiet, nondescript beige-and-red brick office complex in the bucolic Seattle suburb of Issaquah, at the foot of a small mountain range called the Issaquah Alps, would be the nerve center of one of America’s corporate behemoths. The security guard doesn’t just wave you through; she takes time to chat with you. The reception desk has a plate of cookies, and the receptionists encourage you to take one. There is no bustle, only a sense of calm, which is especially striking, since this is the sort of week that would typically engender corporate jitters. It’s the week when Costco Wholesale, the world’s third-­largest retailer, with $116 billion in sales in fiscal 2016, is hosting a triple-header: its monthly budget meetings, with managers flying in from all over the world; its board of directors’ meeting; and, at week’s end, its annual stockholders’ meeting. As the tribes gathered, Costco faced some headwinds. In a sector known for thin profit margins, there was always the threat of intensifying competition, especially from e-commerce retailers like Amazon. There was the challenge of attracting millennials. There were weakening sales at Costco’s overseas stores due in part to currency fluctuations. There was the pending transition from a Costco-branded American Express credit card to a Visa card, which would turn out to be a logistical nightmare. But none of these issues seemed to faze Costco’s leaders. They know that their big-box stores make the company appear to be a tortoise in a hare’s digital world. Still, they’re confident they will win the race. Costco always has. But there was one thing they have been mulling for a long time. And it has nothing to do with economics, at least not directly. It has to do with identity. Costco acts more like a cheerful cult than a hard-driving business. Its executives are proud of the fact that the company promotes almost exclusively from within. Even CEO Craig Jelinek, 62, plainspoken and without affectation, once collected shopping carts at a Costco predecessor, and 98% of the company’s store managers have risen through the ranks. Its top executives have been working together for 30 years, more or less, which makes them family as much as colleagues. It also means there are a lot of gray heads now at those budget meetings. And therein lies the concern. At that month’s meetings, there were warm and wistful send-offs for six of those gray heads, all senior vice presidents, now retiring. And even though they would be replaced by younger Costco lifers, the succession raises a question: As the company approaches its 35th anniversary, will the replacements keep Costco as Costco?</p>
<p>At Costco that isn’t just a question. It is the question. Lots of companies brag about their culture. But few are as proud of it or as dependent upon it as Costco is. Morgan Stanley retail analyst Simeon Gutman calls it a “super-culture,” which he describes as, “If we continue to serve and delight our customers, they’ll want to keep coming back. Costco is a retailing colossus. Its worldwide sales trail only those of Walmart, which has 11,528 stores to Costco’s 715, and Amazon, which just climbed into second place. Costco is the world’s largest seller of choice and prime beef, organic foods, rotisserie chicken, and wine (!), and it moves more nuts than Planters. Its private label, Kirkland Signature, which sells everything from packaged goods and beverages to apparel, generates more revenues than the Coca-Cola Co. But Costco, big as it is, prides itself on not being your typical multibillion-dollar company. That is where the culture comes in. Executives frequently answer their own phones. (“I may get a call from a cashier,” admits CEO Jelinek, “who says, ‘I’m not getting enough hours.’?”) Its offices are open door. And it takes a journalist forever to arrange a visit, not because the company is secretive, but because it doesn’t feel the need to have a public relations department to make arrangements. “People will bang down a door to come to work for Costco,” says Craig Wilson, vice president of quality assurance and food safety, and an 18-year Costco veteran. And once there, just about no one leaves. The company’s retention rate for employees who have been there a year is 94%. “You couldn’t throw enough money at me to make me leave this company,” says Paul Latham, VP of membership, marketing, and Costco Services, with 37 years under his belt. “I love it.” And if nobody leaves, almost nobody gets fired either. When the recession hit and most companies were laying off employees, Costco’s brain trust didn’t let anyone go. “It wasn’t even something that we thought about,” Jelinek says. Instead, the company actually raised wages.</p>
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