Today has been a total feeding frenzy. I am tempted to call the end of the recession but one, or rather two, swallows do not a summer make.
Feeding Frenzy at Media Markt
Firstly the madness in the English football market meant that the recession was temporarily forgotten. My club Liverpool ere the biggest culprits there making deals worth 58 million pounds so far. In Spain there were much bigger deals being done but on a micro level and in a shop not in the football boardroom.
Media Markt had its third year of their “Day without VAT” However this year it is two days. In effect everything in the shop had 18% taken off the price. Now to me that actually doesn’t sound that much, 18%? You see half price sales all of the time! However their marketing of the event is simply superb and they are selling things that are not usually discounted like new cameras, latest generation high def televisions and possibly most importantly Apple products (No iPads left when I went there).
So I thought I would have a quick look this evening to see how things were going and I have to say I was stunned. I have never sen so many people in a shop in Spain. The queues at the tills were 25 people deep at 9.30pm in the evening. They had opened new tills by the emergency exits to get more people through.
Just in case you didn’t know Spain is in a deep deep recession with over 20% unemployment.
So what sparks off the feeding frenzy and what is the psychology of the people buying?
Well they do a lot of good advertising to get people in. And once there, people have gone there just to buy of course, people have the peer pressure to consume and buy possibly more than they otherwise would. The queues work too as people are likely to pick up two or three things so that their time in the queue is not wasted.
The best news for Media Markt of course is that anyone passing the shop is drawn in to see what all of the fuss is about and then when they find out what is going on they want a piece of the action too, after all if everyone else is buying the herd mentality takes over.
So how can you do something like this with your business? Thoughts?
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