Switched On: If Black Friday went my way
posted Nov 30th 2005 3:10PM
Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, an opinion column about consumer technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
Dear Ross,
As a valued customer, we'd like to inform you of some changes that we'll be making to our Black Friday program this
year.
—Shopping site non-aggression: For the past few years, various Web sites have offered details of Black Friday products
and pricing in some cases weeks before these products go on sale. We realize that all of our competitors are going to
have pretty much the same stuff on sale. The brands may be different, but with a 70 percent discount, most people
couldn't care less. In any case, we're not going to threaten to sue Web sites that publish these products and prices.
All in all, it's probably not a bad thing to be on good terms with people directing traffic to our store on Black
Friday.
—Late openings: On Black Friday, our stores will open at 10 AM in recognition that many of our customers travel home
from relatives in a tryptophan-induced stupor on Thanksgiving. Your dollars aren't worth appreciably less five hours
earlier, and we'd like to give plenty of time for all the shoppers coming from the three or four 5 AM openings all
competing with each other to converge at our stores for the 10 AM openings.
—Calming the crowds. After the multimillion-dollar lawsuit judgment entered last year against one of our competitors
following a customer injury in the mad rush for a $2.47 DVD recorder, we will distribute vouchers that guarantee
customers one of the available products in stock. In addition, all customers who are present at the time of opening
will receive a rain check for one Black Friday promotional product if they purchase at least $100 worth of other
products. We believe in the value of creating excitement in our stores without reenacting the final battle scene from
Braveheart.
—Preferred Priority program: Our stores will embrace the spirit of Thanksgiving by offering priority to Black Friday
products to customers using our in-store and online customer loyalty program. Why make you wait in line for eight hours
when you could be buying merchandise from us at home? In addition to cutting down on lines and frustration, this will
help ensure that our best customers get our best prices in the way that’s best for them. If you’ve been one of our top
online customers but live 80 miles away and can’t drive, we really don’t see the need to have you show your face one
day out of the year by offering some deals only in stores.
Black Friday products are available for only a few hours, but the kind of respect for customers shown by sparing them
a frigid sleepless night or favoring a random eBay power seller to them can build lifetime loyalty. From everyone at
our company, have a safe and happy holiday season.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis at NPD Techworld, a division of market research and analysis provider The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On, however, are his own. Feedback is welcome at fliptheswitch@gmail.com.
After watching a mob bum rush the door, have people almost get into fist fights over stock that doesn't actually exist, trying to find items when not one person working is actually helping people, having only 2 people as cashiers, and spending over 2 hours in line to pay at my local CompUSA (West Nyack, NY Palisades Mall), these suggestions would have made things much easier and maybe actually tempt me to come back into the store. But after this Black Friday, I am not coming back to any store (especially CompUSA) for at least a few years.
Awesome.
Well said. This is something all the store managers should read before next year.
Almost get in fist fights? They did! Lame americans fightin with each other over a Sale price. We(canada) just keep getting more and more reasons to laugh at the lame state of your country.
Ross, it's really hard to tell whether you're being sarcastic or serious. If you're serious then these are good ideas. But I think stores like the publicity (even if it's bad publicity) of people busting down the doors and trampling others.
I don't do any shopping on Black Friday. There's no reason to fight the crowds. Plus, when I shop for gifts I'm not looking deals specifically. I'm looking for quality items that someone will want. I'm sure the one receiving your gift will be happier to hear that you had to spend a couple of extra dollars instead of trampling over someone's head for it.
I personally like to hear the stories of all the idiots who HAD to buy the dumb gimick items that were on sale (laptop for $378....quality item there).
Best Buy does hand out vouchers, and they have a great policy for stoping line jumpers.
I got to best buy at 11:30 PM this year, and at 4:30 AM a best Buy manager came out and anounced that they were going to be only letting 50 people in the store at a time, they would go down the line handing out a numbered ticket, if the person in front of you had not always been in front of you, you just had to tell the employee and they would ask the person to leave the line. It worked great, there were like 40 people trying to cut, and they all migrated to the end of the line. After passing out the numbers they went down the line passing out vouchers for the hot items, the $150 computers, and other things. No voucher, no computer. I love the way they do Black Friday, me and a group of friends camp out there every year. It is so much fun, we bring propane heaters and sleeping bags. I didnt even buy anything that much, but I had a blast hanging out with friends and laughing at ourselves for being dumb enough to sit outside a store for 6 horus, lol.
Dear Ross,
OMG LOL J/K. We were totally joking when we sent that letter. All of the stuff we said is totally stupid and will never happen in a million years, so long as the cattle continue to line up at 3 in the morning..
For starters, when our customers trample each other, it makes for great headline news. Lawsuit? Pfft. We'll settle out of court and offer the guy a treadmill so he's a little faster in the door NEXT Black Friday.
And shop online? Yeah right! The Interweb scares us silly, plus, if they pay in store, we'll be able to sleep that night on a mound of beautiful green currency.
And why would we open at 10 AM? Like we said, our competitors and us all sell the same generic knockoff DVD recorders, and we all sell it for the same super low discounted price -- if we open five hours later, our valued customers will go next store and spend their money! Once we finally get around to opening our doors, everyone will think we've either gone out of business, or had no sales. Not to mention that's five hours of missed sales, so opening late would be just plain stupid. If you're too lazy to get your ass out of bed at 2AM, that's hardy our fault. Plenty of other LOYAL customers managed to do so. Go cry to your mama!
Remember how we said we wouldn't sue those web sites promoting our sales? That was pretty funny, huh? I can't believe we were able to type that with a straight face! Of COURSE we're gonna sue, that's just revenue we can add to our bottom line! Ho ho ho!
So remember: if you live 80 miles away and can’t drive, we don't want your business on Black Friday, because you're obviously too poor to afford a car and (probably) ugly too! (We have no idea how we came to that conclusion, just go with us here.)
From everyone at our company, have a safe (hahaha!) and happy holiday season. We look forward to you spending your money with us!