Prime Day Sale & Big Saving Days!

I am sure you know about the upcoming Prime Day Sale & Big Saving Days.

I had earlier written a post about why competitors are found next to each other or why do they have a sale around the same time. In case you missed that post, here is the link:

Why do you find Pizza Hut next to Domino’s?

But in this post, I would like to talk about how big brands are making customers buy on a particular day or time. Why do they do that?

Let’s first talk about FOMO. It’s actually a word that got added to Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. It stands for Fear of Missing Out.

Wikipedia says: “Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a social anxiety stemming from the belief that others might be having fun while the person experiencing the anxiety is not present.”

It’s a Marketing Technique too.

On an ordinary day, how do we buy?

We extensively research, analyse before zeroing down on a product.  Most of us look at ratings, reviews etc. We look for something called as ‘Social Proof’ these days.

Then we compare prices between vendors. And choose the one who gives you maximum returns on your investment [isn’t that a nice way of saying we choose the one who offers the lowest prices?].

Coming back to FOMO as a marketing technique, brands are saying:

1. That you will miss out if you don’t buy during such and such a time.
2. Or you will be left behind if you don’t do this now.
3. Take charge.
4. Act now.
5. Be Smart.
6. Everybody else is having fun. Why not you?

This is how Big Brands / Online Retailers make customers buy on a particular date or time. But why do they do this? They do this to:

1. Increase sales, obviously.
2. Do ‘Predictive Analytics’ and benefit from it.
3. Streamline Supply Chain and benefit.
4. Benefit from ‘Economies of Scale’.
5. Increase Market Share.
6. Improve the visibility of their Brand.

Many years ago I had seen this concept employed by small time retail textile shops. In a place called Madurai in Tamil Nadu, the retailers came up with a strategy. They announced that a particular type of Saree called as ‘Sungadi Saree’ would be available only on Wednesdays every week. And you can imagine the kind of crowd that queued up outside their stores on Wednesdays even before they opened their shops. It is needless to state that it was a runaway success.

Apple employs this strategy every time they launch a new product and customers start queuing up from the night before the SALE day and bring with them pillows etc., to sleep while waiting for the store to open.

Don’t think that this applies only to b2c and not to b2b. I will write about how it is used in b2b in another post.

Happy Learning!

Happy Selling!

#b2bsales #b2c #fomo #kkrocks #primeday #bigsavingsday