Monday, December 01, 2008
Cyber Monday
& if you believe that, I got a new baseball stadium with your name on it.
I was looking through the advertising circulars in the Sunday paper yesterday, the big stores, Target, Sears, Best Buy. I was trying to pick up on some desperate tone, a neediness, that they really, really want us to drop big bucks in their stores, & they're sincerely (yeah, sure) making it worth our while, slashing prices, great sales, real deals. I wasn't finding that tone, or the great deals. Oh, there were some across-the-board sales on clothes & sneakers that looked pretty good. Maybe a refrigerator is a gift item, I don't know. But for the rest, the big ticket stuff like TVs & computers, the electronics, the tech toys, it was the same old let's pretend this is discounted game. It's like they all want our business, but the stores compete with each other on variety, not prices. This is recession? This is a retail industry up against the economic wall? Stores failing all over the map. We ought to expect they'd be begging us now, only a few weeks before Christmas.
Look, Big Retail Chain Stores, if you want a mob trampling your temp clerks, just pick some decent quality name brand items lots of consumers want; a laptop that won't be antiquated tomorrow, a midprice PC bundle that makes sense, an HDTV. an MP3 player, a better-than-OK digital camera, a GPS, & stock about 500 of each of these items per store, & stick prices on them that totally destroy the competition. Give yourself a modest markup. Because you'll sell every single one of them. We enjoy choice & variety - up to a point. But nothing narrows our focus & opens us to compromise more than a HUGE discount. Stop overwhelming us with selection & details & "specifications," & tweaking the prices ten dollars on this thing, 20 dollars on that thing. Make us not even bother looking for comparisons. Act desperate, fer cripessakes.
Oh yeah, stop the "factory refurbished" game, putting those two words in small print or saying it's a "special buy." Sometimes it's a good deal, but the prices are set by the manufacturers, not by you, & they sell it on their own websites, & are upfront about it.
As for "Cyber Monday," it's so bogus. The online retailers noticed a blip on their sale charts the Monday after Thanksgiving, so they decided to call it a sales event & make us suckers think their stuff is cheaper today than it was last Friday.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
I was looking through the advertising circulars in the Sunday paper yesterday, the big stores, Target, Sears, Best Buy. I was trying to pick up on some desperate tone, a neediness, that they really, really want us to drop big bucks in their stores, & they're sincerely (yeah, sure) making it worth our while, slashing prices, great sales, real deals. I wasn't finding that tone, or the great deals. Oh, there were some across-the-board sales on clothes & sneakers that looked pretty good. Maybe a refrigerator is a gift item, I don't know. But for the rest, the big ticket stuff like TVs & computers, the electronics, the tech toys, it was the same old let's pretend this is discounted game. It's like they all want our business, but the stores compete with each other on variety, not prices. This is recession? This is a retail industry up against the economic wall? Stores failing all over the map. We ought to expect they'd be begging us now, only a few weeks before Christmas.
Look, Big Retail Chain Stores, if you want a mob trampling your temp clerks, just pick some decent quality name brand items lots of consumers want; a laptop that won't be antiquated tomorrow, a midprice PC bundle that makes sense, an HDTV. an MP3 player, a better-than-OK digital camera, a GPS, & stock about 500 of each of these items per store, & stick prices on them that totally destroy the competition. Give yourself a modest markup. Because you'll sell every single one of them. We enjoy choice & variety - up to a point. But nothing narrows our focus & opens us to compromise more than a HUGE discount. Stop overwhelming us with selection & details & "specifications," & tweaking the prices ten dollars on this thing, 20 dollars on that thing. Make us not even bother looking for comparisons. Act desperate, fer cripessakes.
Oh yeah, stop the "factory refurbished" game, putting those two words in small print or saying it's a "special buy." Sometimes it's a good deal, but the prices are set by the manufacturers, not by you, & they sell it on their own websites, & are upfront about it.
As for "Cyber Monday," it's so bogus. The online retailers noticed a blip on their sale charts the Monday after Thanksgiving, so they decided to call it a sales event & make us suckers think their stuff is cheaper today than it was last Friday.
Labels: bully pulpit, shopping
