Plum counted, or Sales in Russian

Over the past month there have been several notable sales in the consumer electronics market - perhaps the loudest in recent years. It seemed to me interesting to look back, recall all the details and evaluate the benefits of the organizers of these actions. The article is written for CyberStyle.ru, but I can not share with the dear Habra :) and would be happy to hear opinions and comments.

I did not find a suitable blog, so let it be here.



Opened the season of rush sales network electronics M.video. For 16 years of work, the “red men” have managed to create for themselves an image of a shop for people of the middle class, more precisely, even the upper middle. The prices were noticeably higher than the market, but the equipment is “white”, the staff is polite, and you don’t have to figure out what you are going to buy, they will tell and select everything. A little less than a year ago, the company decided to destroy the image of an “expensive store” and a series of sales began. Perhaps, in the first days of August this process reached its apogee.



So, at the very beginning of August, M.video began selling a 16-gigabyte iPhone 3G without any noticeable advertising in the media at a price of nearly 15 thousand rubles. In other words, the discount on the usual price was 9 thousand. The news of this spread around the Russian-speaking segment of Twitter and the numerous Runet forums - people ran to the nearest stores. Phones were available and sold. As a rule, there was a sign near the ticket office informing about the need to connect to MegaFon when buying an iPhone, but the staff did not particularly insist. In about three days (two of which fell at the weekend), all stocks ran out.



Later the second phase of the cunning plan began. We went on sale iPhone 3G 8 GB at an even more affordable price - 9990 rubles. Actually, it was this slogan and was accompanied by a TV advertising campaign: "We made the iPhone accessible." This sale was not so smooth, several factors affected. First of all, a very modest number of devices were delivered to each store every day: units, somewhere, dozens. Even in the latter case, demand significantly exceeded supply. Secondly, the personnel of outlets showed themselves far from the best. A noticeable proportion of the shipments delivered instantly bought up by the employees of the stores themselves. “Employees are also buyers” - such an answer was received by the indignant masses. These masses, by the way, lined up in the queue since the evening. First civilized. Some stores even had lists. However, the closer the object of desire was, the more leveled the effect of evolution. Already near the box offices began fighting - fortunately, small and sluggish.



What all this action gave M.video? From the point of view of the marketers of the company - advertising, repeated mentions, conversations (about this, by the way, let's talk a little below). But brand recognition is the task of advertising only as a first approximation. Another important factor is the attitude of consumers to the brand. Rumors of fights in queues and the purchase of all goods by store workers quickly spread on the Internet, for the image of the trading network it was a big blow. In fact, M.Video showed an example of not quite civilized trade. The hype itself is great, but you need to play by the rules themselves and help to preserve human dignity to others.

')

It is also interesting where all these phones came from, and, according to some information, there are about one and a half tens of thousands of them. It turned out that their stock iPhones "leaked" MegaFon. As it is known, the sales of the “apple” phone turned out to be noticeably lower than the operators' expectations, and the whole “Big Three” came to this summer with full warehouses of goods that became poorly liquid, especially after the release of the iPhone 3GS. The contract with Apple did not provide for the price protection scheme, operators tried to talk about it again, but the Cupertino remained adamant. MegaFon killed two birds with one stone. Firstly, with this sale, the company “bought” a place in M.video. It is likely that special operator zones will appear in the red stores soon. Secondly, it was possible to get rid of the suitcase without a handle, and now MegaFon is fully ready for sales of the iPhone 3GS. According to unconfirmed information, several pallets of new phones have already been brought to Russia, which are waiting for customs clearance and certification. MegaFon has the opportunity to discuss with Apple questions about the cost of supplying the new iPhone, without looking at the reserves of the previous model. Most likely, sales of iPhone 3GS will begin in late September or early October, and the blue-violet operator will not wait for colleagues, which means the latter will have to agree to the not very favorable terms of relations with Apple.



But we digress. The following two stocks are intertwined. First, on August 21 in LiveJournal, information appeared about a quick sale of 400 RoverBook laptops at a single price of 9,990 rubles. At the same time, there was a list of models, among which there were several really interesting names, for example, this:



RB Nautilus V771VHP iCore 2 Duo T8100; i965PM / 4096 (DDR2) / 320 (SATA) / 17 "WSXGA + (GS) / GF8600MGT-512 / DVDRW-Multi / BT / WiFi / TV + RC / Cam / L1G / Vista Premium x64



In "peacetime" this laptop was sold (and sold) for more than 50 thousand rubles. A few days later, an official confirmation appeared that Euroset and Rover Computers agreed on a noisy action.



In this place, Euroset will have to be forgotten in order to preserve chronological fidelity of presentation. While everyone was waiting for the Day of Knowledge, the Eldorado company prepared its answer. Tellingly, the answer happened earlier than the “question” - August 30th.



In one single Eldorado store on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow, two and a half hundred eMachines notebooks were sold. The model was claimed as a game, and although it is very far from the truth, its characteristics are still quite good: 17-inch screen, Athlon X2 64 2 GHz processor, 3 GB of RAM, 250 GB hard disk, Windows Vista Home Premium. Outside the action, the laptop was sold twice as expensive - for 19990 rubles.



Alas, in life the action turned into, if not a tragedy (fortunately, there were no victims), then certainly a grim page in the company's history. At that time, more than five hundred potential buyers gathered at the store, with all the fibers of their soul wanting to become valid buyers. In the resulting crush suffered several people (the truth of the information about their hospitalization is questionable, but such data have been received). Only the arrived police squads could save the situation.





A spokesman for Eldorado spoke of this in the following way: “From the very beginning, we announced that only 250 E-Machine laptops were participating in the promotion, which were sold for 10 thousand rubles instead of the usual 20 thousand. Our calculations that during the crisis the solvency of the population will not allow to sell more than 250 laptops, did not materialize. ” However, it is clear that this is a natural reaction if you want to avoid accusations that the organizers of the rally put the lives and health of people at risk. Say, buyers are all so unexpected, so sudden everything.



But this is not curious. In Eldorado, as in M.video, the question of cleanliness of staff arose. Many of those who lost hope of getting the cherished check-out counter for payment, in distress, wandered into the next room, where they found ... store employees who sold paid checks for 13 thousand rubles.



To evaluate this action, frankly, is difficult and unpleasant. She turned into an emergency, and their characteristics do not operate with market categories. The people who returned from the sale first wrote on the forums not “I bought it!”, But “Everything is in order, alive and healthy”. The following message appeared in the official corporate microblog of the company:



“Probably, you already heard about yesterday's situation. The next time we will be more organized and put up for sale a greater number of laptops »



Finally, back to Euroset. On the morning of the first of September, while the schoolchildren were built on the “lines”, the adults lined up next to the three salons of the company indicated in the terms of the promotion. It is noteworthy that the policemen were already on duty there, and the corridors of the barriers were arranged.



The sale itself unexpectedly turned into a lottery. Two or three customers were allowed in and issued checks to randomly selected (I want to believe) models of laptops. Satisfied - at the cashier. No - home or to the end of the line. A significant part of the list of promotional models were, to put it mildly, obsolete, and only a handful of options were of interest. Buyers were guided by them, asking for leave from work and postponing ten green bills to go to Euroset. Having a choice, they were not ready for it, and many decided to take what they give. No matter how sad it is, this is probably what the action was intended for, or rather, the form of its holding.



Who got what? Euroset has quite loudly entered the retail notebook market (it has transferred the trade of this type of devices from side to main ones). Left without victims, without fights and crush. To the door of the shops everything happened exactly as it should. Inside is sadness. By the way, the Day of Knowledge still made itself felt, on the street the action was like passing an exam: at the entrance there was a queue with trembling knees, at the exit there were lucky people running to tell the fellow students who had not yet fired to answer the question “Well, how is it ?!”.



Well, the company Rover Computers just got rid of several hundred old devices, the only alternative fate of which would be parsing for parts and sending it to service centers.



The action of Euroset is the most civilized in terms of the form and number of pitfalls. It is pleasant to see that at the same time the advertising return from the event turned out to be no worse than that of the competitors:



The collapse of the graphs to zero is due to the spilling of a cup of coffee on the server of the Pulse of the Yandex blogosphere and is an artifact. Attention is paid to the difference in the height of the peaks falling on the days of the shares from the average levels. Their attitude is the effectiveness of the action.



It turns out that you can be on hearing and without fights at the doors of shops. The time is not easy now, people are tense due to the crisis and therefore they are more susceptible to the “freebie”. The fact that they, in desire to buy expensive equipment with a big discount, lose a human face is, of course, sad, but quite understandable. Instincts, you know. But to exploit them for the fun of the public - the idea is unworthy. I want to believe that sales will continue, but they will pass in a civilized way.



© Ilya Rubtsov, 2009, written for CyberStyle.ru with thoughts about Habré :)

Above the photo of Vladimir Fokin