Industry Bypass / Spam Filter Bypass

I tried to email this article to my friend Catherine Nomura @ The Strategic Coach, but their spam filter kept kicking it back. Thus, I had to devise a bypass to the filter. Alas, the beauty of blogs and RSS.

I know that Catherine has a subscription to this blog via FEEDBLITZ, so I am just going to paste what I would have sent via email in this blog. Catherine can then pick the info up via the Blog, RSS Reader or FEEDBLITZ. The spam filter has been bypassed!!! I feel empowered.

Here is a link to the article and a quick excerpt:

Picking your casket at Costco

Discount retailers forcing a change in funeral economics

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By Jeff Kearns

Last Update: 7:48 PM ET May 10, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shoppers aren't flocking to Costco for caskets the way they do, say, for canned goods. But the entry of Costco and other discount retailers into a portion of the death-care industry is shaking up the way funeral homes are doing business.

Costco remains a bit player in the $25 billion death-care industry, which includes everything from hearses to headstones. But a new analysis shows that while Costco and other online discounters, including Funeral Depot, represent just a tiny fraction of total sales, they're having a big influence on casket pricing.

Funeral homes, which still sell the vast majority of caskets, have responded to discounters by lowering casket prices, according to a new study by two Yale economists. "They're feeling somewhat threatened by these other channels of distribution," says co-author Fiona Scott Morton.

But to compensate funeral homes have raised prices on services such as viewings, flowers or embalming, so funeral costs effectively remain unchanged.

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