Profit per visit seems flawed as well. Why not just optimize profit, or long-term expected profit?
The vague statement, "the shift in metric played a huge role in aligning the company’s focus," seems at odds with the article's emphasis on metrics. Let's get some measurement of the effect of the metric.
I imagine that the metric change from profit per store to profit per visit was just part of a bureaucratic shift in the way Walgreens divided territory among managers.
Bummer, I thought this was going to be an article talking about a person's own behavior. Personal analytics are fascinating to me, and if someone was to figure out some cool metrics to help incentivize personal behavior, that would be really interesting.
Basically, their strategy is to saturate the market, and they don't care if they steal sales or cannibalize their own sales. They're maximizing profit per customer visit, but ignoring customer visits per store per week?
I admire skepticism, and yes this kind of guerrilla marketing is common, but I don't think Walgreens would be targeting Hacker News. Hackers are not a prime demographic.
A point in your favor though, The author is pretty new. This being his second blog post.
The vague statement, "the shift in metric played a huge role in aligning the company’s focus," seems at odds with the article's emphasis on metrics. Let's get some measurement of the effect of the metric.
I imagine that the metric change from profit per store to profit per visit was just part of a bureaucratic shift in the way Walgreens divided territory among managers.