Attempt to analyze Toshiba upgrade actions

For those who do not know: from July 1 to July 3, an action organized by Toshiba (Russia) took place, during which the old laptops were exchanged for coupons of 10 kilorubles, which could be spent on buying a new Toshiba laptop of any model.

I will not discuss a bad organization, etc., I want to talk about why and why the action was held.

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I myself did not take part in the action, so I judge it only from the feedback from participants. Well, the idea is quite bold. But, as often happens in our Raschka , the organization was lame in both legs. The main reason was the inaccurate rules that could be interpreted in different ways. This mainly concerned the criteria for those old laptops that were to be exchanged. From here queues, upset visitors who were denied, etc.

However, my post is not about that. As I said, the action passed by me, so I consider myself unable to criticize the organizers, especially since the task of the action was nevertheless completed - 1,180 coupons (for the whole country) were sold. So I want to reflect on what pushed Toshiba to this bold step.

Banal calculations: 1180 * 10,000 = 11,800,000 without the cost of organizing, which is commensurate with this amount. I suppose Toshiba reimbursed this amount to the merchant stores, otherwise no one would participate in the promotion. That is, in fact, the company paid twice a KJ laptop (during production and upon reimbursement to stores). This is a loss of Toshiba. Income: sales of 1180 laptops, in the middle price category (with discount) from 6,000 to 15,000. For example, the sale of these laptops paid for the coupons themselves.
And what about the cost of the organization? And most importantly, the production itself? It turns out, Toshiba remained in a huge loss, which is natural.

Hence the reasonable question: what did they want to achieve with this action? Yes, the action had an awesome hype, despite the rather poor advertising. Of course, it was predictable, like any large-scale freebie. Will a three-day rally, which had an audience of about 2-3 thousand people for (!) All of Russia, increase interest in the brand? Stupid question. But the faith in free cheese will increase.

Most of all it looks like the sale of poor-quality / defective / repair products. I do not find for myself so far another explanation, so the post is called an “attempt”, since I have not come to certain results.