Skip to main content

Sale, sale, sale, sale, sale...everyday is a sale

I am sure, you, like me, are a member of a few ecommerce sites. Most of whom have all your personal data (but you don't know it yet). Be that as it may, for the present, they have your mail id and phone number.

And if you are still among the hapless people who use the same email for registering with the ecomm sites and your work/regular email - your mailbox will be under sever duress by now.

Ditto with SMS. Almost all of human communication has moved away from SMS - leaving the SMS to the bots.

And what do we get in these SMSs and mails?

Sale. Sale. Sale. Everyday there is a sale.

Either there is sale of specs (the last time I bought a specs it was when my doctor recommended a change for me, not when there is a sale).

Or there is a sale of donuts (yes, make statins miles free with them please, that may tempt me a few decades later).

Or there is a half price sale of lingerie. Or apparel. Or electronics. Either it is Diwali. Or a Zillion Zollar Zale. Or the last 3 days of some sale.

Net net, every day there is some sale or other. Each of them wants to use my impulse to buy with a promise of low price like there is no tomorrow. And we all know that there will be always be another sale, like the proverbial next bus.

While these notifications spam my inbox and I see them only when I delete them, the question I have on this is; Are these periodic sales the only way to boost sales? That too on every site? Is there no other way at all? I mean, specs to donuts to potted plants to jewellery?

PS: When you walk around in Bangalore - at many places you will see a shack put up with the board - Bombay sale, Furniture sale, Books-by-the-kilo sale and by and large people ignore them. Undeniably they have a market, but, if one is an e-com site and everyone is offering periodic sale - they will reach the point of these shacks. Sure given the size of the market, people will bite, but, my question is - is there no better way?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...

Anti networking year

I dont usually go out of my way to network. But over the last few years, I ensured that I spend some time creating new connections. It is a small fragment of my time that goes into it, but what I realised was that some of those networking events were not really working out. I also took time to post about the things I do (mostly on Linkedin) and here (nobody reads this - this is more of a note to myself).  It seemed to be the same set of people saying the same set of things. So, this year I have decided to step back.  Unless it is a truly unique event, I wont be going to any event - and thats how the unconference happened.  Unless it is a really significant update, I wont be posting about it.  And spend time creating and doing the things I like to do. Perhaps read more. Or write more. It is April now and I have done well so far.  Managed to read a few books. Actively working on a few creations. And then some. Lets see.  So for all I know, I might write less ...