Unintended consequences of sales
Today, I picked up a CD, some anime, and a portable DVD player at Best Buy. Why today? I received a promotional mailing, offering 10% discounts for purchases over the four day period January 7-10. Best Buy makes these mailings all the time, with one of these sales every two months or so, normally around three day weekends.
It has gotten to the point where if I want something from Best Buy, I'll wait for the next sale. Why should I buy at full price? There are probably a lot of people who feel the same way. The company runs the risk that consumers will get a substitute from another source in the interim, or decide they don't want the product after all, all because they have predictable lower prices.
Companies like Wal-Mart, which advertise everyday low prices (even if prices change frequently), end up a common destination when you need to pick up something while waiting for the local grocery store to do its triple coupon sale or other bargain special. It's all perception.
posted by Greg @ 10:38 PM
6 Comments:
Gecko,
To answer the question in a previous post, Best Buy is back to closing at 9 PM.
I hope they have better hours in Washington state. If you shop at Best Buy often, have you considered their Rewards program? I paid 9.95 for a card. Whenever I go to Best Buy (usually to satisfy my anime addiction), I present the card and it's scanned to add points for all of my purchases. for every 15,000 points you get $5 off of a purchase. I easily recouped the cost of the program and have recieved a couple more $5 certificates. In addition, those sales flyers you mentioned occasionally have 10% off with 12% for Reward Zone members. Just something to consider.
As for Wal-Mart, I am a firm believer in cheap. However, as my sister-in-law mwntioned to me, there are always decent quality items on clearance at most department of factory stores (like Kohls and Burlington).
BTW, what anime did you buy?
I bought the two DVD sets for the series Nadia. It's a replacement for the fansubs I watched years ago.
It's amazing how I hardly ever run into someone who is/has seen/bought the same series that I follow; there are just so many out there! I'm trying to put together a list in excel form so I can easily reference certain stats, like number of episodes, age rating, number of DVDs; stuff like that. It's kind of on hold due to my urgent need to find a job.
I've found numerous database sites, but they all seem to be lacking content or format desired.
Anyway, I haven't seen Nadia; let me know if it's worth a look if you want to. I'll place a post for suggested anime on my anime blog.
My own anime viewership is about 10 years in the past, since I have all these tapes (fansubs) that I never got around to watching.
Nadia, the Mystery of Blue Water, is loosely based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, in that it is the correct time period and there is the submarine Nautilus and Captain Nemo, but that arch-villain wasn't in any Verne writing.
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