Pi-Consulting

The average American adds a tip of between 8% and 37% after an enjoyable meal. Yet 40% of Americans profess to hate tipping as a practice. They are not alone. Australians have a long history of hating the whole idea of tipping, on the basis that “The person’s doing their job and getting paid, so why should I pay them even more?”. Sydney taxi drivers have been known to give tippers a nasty look, throw the tip money on the sidewalk, and shout “Think you’re better than me, eh, cobber?” (Source: Cornell University, Pi).

he average American will still order a double cheeseburger and large fries, then virtuously pick a diet soft drink to wash it down with. Since the early 1990s, America’s average bra size has jumped from 34B to 36C. Brassiere company executives attribute this mainly to the above mentioned double cheeseburgers and large fries, though surgical breast implants in the USA have also been increasing by as much as half each year. Clearly a contributory factor to the bra-size explosion. (Sources: Simmons, New York Times, American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Pi).

Tech rules. The average American comes up with more commercially exploitable technological innovations and ideas than people from practically any other country. The Finns, for some reason, seem to be the runners-up. Despite this, the typical American faced with a malfunctioning electronic device, notwithstanding his/her membership of the most technologically advanced society in man’s history, still usually resorts to ‘percussive maintenance’, i.e. thumping the crap out of the thing to try to start it working again. (Sources: World Economic Forum, The Dilbert Zone, Pi)

The Product Placement (PP) industry, as it relates to movies and television, was an American invention, and largely remains an American preserve. This is for the overriding reason that Hollywood, the filmed entertainment world’s HQ and epicenter, is located on American soil. Its executives, financiers and writers dance to the tune of American message-mongers, sliding everything from branded beer to iconic cars into the movie fare we watch. The PP industry bankrolls Hollywood to a significant degree, and helps to ensure that $100 million movie productions don’t cost $150 million or more. Even the Pentagon – and its army, navy, marines and air force divisions – have their own anonymous-looking but luxurious offices on Hollywood’s outskirts. They run these “entertainment liaison offices” to ensure that Uncle Sam’s latest combat hardware gets a favorable showing, and that the US military continues to occupy a big and favorable corner of America’s – and by extension the world’s –subconscious. Did anyone think that “The Hunt for Red October”, “Sands of Iwo Jima” and “Air Force One” got made without a generous slab of cash from the Pentagon? Welcome to America’s world of product placement, where all-conquering technology, prominently featured in the movies and on TV, makes sure that America’s military continues to get – and the profitable armaments industry to produce – well… all-conquering technology! Source: London Sunday Telegraph, Pi

As this site reported on March 17th, “America’s consumer electronics (CE) industry is grappling with stringent new federal and state legislation to ensure that manufacturers ‘take out the garbage’ as they sell-in new gizmos like HDTV. The issue is a serious one, with the impending switch-off of analogue TV services likely to mean huge numbers of old TV sets getting left on the sidewalk”. We spoke too soon. A new CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) study posits an “afterlife” for many superannuated TV sets. “While some have speculated that millions of TVs would enter the waste stream, …results of the (CEA) study …show that households …expect to remove fewer than 15 million televisions from their homes through 2010. Ninety-five percent will be sold, donated or re-cycled”. Nearly half of OTA-only (i.e. traditional “over-the-air”) TV households “expect to buy a digital converter box, …and to continue using the same TV”. When the old set has to go, re-cycling is increasingly the disposal method of choice, with consumers reporting 30% more TV’s recycled in 2007 than two years earlier. Pi salutes this impressively green and responsible consumer trend! Sources: CEA, Pi.