Author Archives: Morgan O'Rourke

About Morgan O'Rourke

Morgan O’Rourke is editor in chief of Risk Management magazine and director of publications for the Risk & Insurance Management Society (RIMS).
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How Not to Fight Showrooming

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As traditional brick-and-mortar retailers continue devise ways to combat “showrooming” (the practice where customers browse store shelves to check out items that they ultimately intend to buy online), it seems that one retailer has come up with a new plan — charge customers for “just looking.”

According to the above photo posted this week on Reddit, a specialty food store in Brisbane, Australia has decided to charge customers a $5 fee for browsing, which they will refund from the purchase price of whatever they buy. Somehow they think that charging what amounts to an admission fee to enter their store will be good for business, but treating prospective customers like the enemy sounds like the worst marketing strategy ever.

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It’s almost as if they’re encouraging people to go online.

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It seems to me that if their prices were truly “almost the same as other stores” as they claim, they wouldn’t have this problem. And if their products are unavailable anywhere else, how is showrooming even an option?

Logical issues aside, showrooming is certainly a problem for retailers. But wouldn’t a price matching policy, like the one Target chose to put in place, be a more effective way to fight it? Or how about making your store a more inviting place to shop by welcoming your customers with a personal touch they can’t get online? As I understand it, usually the goal for retailers is to get more people into your store, but what do I know?

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I guess policies like this are yet another reason why not every business can be a success.

Wildfire Lessons from Waldo Canyon

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Last summer marked an especially destructive wildfire season in Colorado with insurance claims exceeding $450 million. One fire in particular – the  Waldo Canyon blaze that raged through the Colorado Springs area in June and July – burned more than 18,000 acres, destroyed almost 350 homes and caused the evacuation of more than 32,000 residents.  Reportedly, it was the most expensive fire in state history, causing more than $350 million worth of insurance claims.

Obviously, a fire of this magnitude can teach some valuable lessons for future mitigation efforts and earlier this week the Fire Adapted Communities Coalition (FAC), a national partnership dedicated to promoting best practices to reduce wildfire-related damage, released “Lessons from Waldo Canyon,” an investigative report that examined what happened. The report determined that the fire could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the mitigation efforts of the Colorado Springs Fire Marshal. In one neighborhood alone, mitigation efforts saved millions:

According to estimates provided by the Colorado Springs Mitigation Section and FEMA, the cost benefit ratio for the mitigation efforts for the Cedar Heights neighborhood was 1/257; $300,000 was spent on mitigation work and $77,248,301 in losses were avoided. Combined cost benefit ratio was 1/ 517 for the three neighborhoods with the highest impacts.

The report presented a variety of findings that could help other communities mitigate their own wildfire risk and outlined the importance of proper building construction and maintenance, reduction of fuels for fire, and partnerships with other organizations to spread the preparedness message.

The FAC also developed a companion video entitled, “Creating Fire Adapted Communities: A Case Study from Colorado Springs and the Waldo Canyon Fire” that includes dramatic footage of the fire and interviews with emergency personnel and residents to further drive home these mitigation lessons and hopefully prevent future disasters.

Temple University Takes First Place in Risk Management Competition

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Peggy Accordino, chairwoman of the Spencer Educational Foundation, with the winners of the 2013 VCU/Spencer RMI Challenge from Temple University (l to r): Pete Adonizio, Kyle Enderle, Gina Ross and Mike Cross

 

The next generation of risk managers took center stage when earlier this week, students from seven schools traveled to Richmond, Virginia to compete in the second annual Virginia Commonwealth University RISC/Spencer RMI Challenge. The students were given a complex risk management case study that centered around the upcoming Richmond 2015 Union Cyclist International, a world championship bicycle road racing event organized by Union Cycliste Internationale, sports cycling’s governing body.

The students, who had studied the case for six weeks prior to the competition, each gave a presentation to a panel of risk management experts who then selected the top three teams to present in front of the more than 150 industry professionals who attended VCU’s Risk and Insurance Study Center’s (RISC) Trends Conference.

Temple University’s team, which included Pete Adonizio, Mike Cross, Kyle Enderle and Gina Ross, came out on top and took home the $4,000 prize. Teams from Illinois State University and Virginia Commonwealth University (last year’s winner)  finished second and third respectively and received $3,000 and $2,000.

Other schools that competed in the challenge included Ball State University, St. John’s University,  the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia.

The competition was sponsored by the Spencer Educational Foundation, which provides scholarships for risk management and insurance students.

Students from Ball State University, Illinois State University, St. John’s University, Temple University, University of Alabama, University of Georgia and Virginia Commonwealth University, participated in this year’s challenge.

Mouse Bombs to the Rescue

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Guam seems like a creepy place. Back in 2010, I wrote about how the island had become infested with hordes of brown tree snakes that cause millions of dollars in property damage and frequent power outages every year. On top of that, the snakes have wiped out most of the native bird population and, in doing so, have allowed the spider population to thrive to the point that Guam now has 40 times more spiders than any neighboring Pacific island. Tourism has obviously suffered because, well, snakes and spiders are everywhere. It’s basically nightmare fuel.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a plan though. This spring they plan to drop a bunch of dead mice from helicopters into the jungles in Guam’s Andersen Air Force base. The mice will be laced with acetaminophen, which is deadly to the snakes, and attached to cardboard and streamers so they can float down into the jungle canopy where the snakes live and deliver a last meal right to their doorstep. They did a smaller mouse bomb drop over the naval base in 2010 and evidently it was successful enough to try again in the larger, 110-acre area. It sounds crazy but, hey, anything that works.

And if nothing else, you have to give them points for creative risk management.