WAIT! We interrupt this blog post for a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Hey there, everyone!

I just wanted to say a big “Thank You” to Roy Edlund over at BlogHeaderGuy.com for doing my header for me. You can also follow him on Twitter. He is @blogheaderguy on Twitter. Check out his work!

Thanks!

~Tim

We now bring you this blog post in its entirety!

As I write this, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  There are many pictures that come to mind.

• Family
• Food
• Football
• Freedom

Then the next day, Friday, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest day in retail.  Stores all over the country will open early.  VERY early.  Some stores will open at 4am.

4am?

I remember in 2001, I woke up at around 5:30am to go to Wal-Mart for something that was only on sale from 6:00-11:00am.  I watched as the employees surrounded a number of wrapped pallets in the aisles between grocery and clothing.  The store was FLOODED with customers waiting for that big announcement.

People were scouting out where things were.  They had their lists, the advertisements, their plans.  They were going to this store first for this, that and the other thing.  Then off to this store by 6:45am to get products a, b, and c.  By 7:30, they would be travelling to the third store.  And on it went.

This year, in a time of economic unrest and recession, I am reminded of all the sales and marketing tactics that are demonstrated to the public.  The latest, greatest product will be on sale beginning at 4:00am.  Get there early, because supplies are LIMITED. 

Let me ask you a question.  Do you think that maybe, just possibly, that there is a REASON that supplies are limited?  Of course there is a reason.  They want as many people as possible to be there to spend as much as they can as fast as they can, and they do that with the concept of scarcity.  People will do almost anything if they think that they will lose out on something…some deal…some GREAT bargain.  And they won’t even THINK about all of the driving that they are doing….of the money they are spending in gas.  And they won’t think about this, either:

There will be more of the “limited supplies” in January.  And February.  And March. 

I call this “Planned Scarcity”, for lack of a better term.  You see, stores need to make sales in January, February, and March just as much as they need sales in December.  They create a LOT of hype concerning the latest, greatest product, and then limit the supplies in the stores.  You can bet that the rest of the products are in their warehouses, waiting to be shipped to the stores. 

So when you go out shopping for this Christmas season, just remember that if you can’t find it now, and if it can wait, look again in January.  Or February.  Or March.  It’ll be there.

More another time,

Tim

Word Count: 503

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Marketing, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.