What’s Gotta Go

This could possibly be known as Black Friday part 2, but it really applies to any big sale day of the year.  On these major holidays, retailers know they need to get you in the door so you might purchase at their outlet versus competing store.  Basic marketing knowledge is that once you get them in the door, the chances of them buying some non or lesser sale item is much higher.  Pretty simple concept.  So the easiest way to do this is do offer some big loss leader (door buster) to get you there.  It really doesn’t take much in the tech world to get geeks like me, blank DVDs, big hard drive for cheap price, yet another memory stick, etc.  What really chaps my hide is showing up and every big sale item is gone, kaput.

You want my business, have a decent number of these things on hand!  It should be about at least a bit of customer satisfaction, right?  I’ll tell you what, I sing the praises of a store I got a killer deal at.  But, if I show up and what I was looking for is gone, I don’t stick around and shop for something else just because I am in the buying mood.  I wanted the deal or a few of the deals.  I’m pretty level-headed about it, I don’t show up at the end of the day expecting they will still have them.  I have a head on my shoulders.  But if I am there within the first hour of opening, come on, there should still be some inventory there.

Again, I think I am pretty reasonable on my expectations.  Black Friday featured some incredible laptop deals at some of the big retailers.  Take a moment to read the fine print?  “At least 8 available at each store.”  Whoa, a whole 8 of them?  If this is a big loss leader though, I don’t expect hundreds of this to be there, so it doesn’t even cross my mind to go after these.  What I am talking about is the DVDs mentioned above.  I burn a lot of these with the kind of work I do with computers.  These are a resource I fly through.  Bring a good amount of these in so I can show up, grab one and feel like I have won.  Once I have a deal in hand, I am going to browse around the store happy as a lark, looking for anything else that tickles my fancy.

I often wonder though how bad this situation is in other states.  I live in a state full of pretty “cheap” people.  I don’t mean they are bad people, just on the whole this crowd wants to spend as little as possible and it doesn’t take much of a sale to get them in a fervor.  Free hot dogs at the local R.C. Willey (furniture store for all you outsiders) brings people in droves.  Hey, we have lots of kids here, feeding the family a free meal means something.  Do other states burn through a stores entire sale inventory at near the speed of light, or is that a local phenomenon?  I am guessing we may lead the pack, but that the situation is still a common one.

So anyone that may work at a Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, Staples, etc. who comes across this little rant of mine, perhaps you could think of my take on sales next time a big holiday comes around.  I would enjoy actually having a little customer satisfaction next sale day.  “Can’t get no, can’t get no, can’t get no satisfaction.”