Back Seat Marketers

Here’s a thought, retailers, do something different than super low prices to get my attention. Door busters were interesting, but they’ve run their course, but now, as your shopper, I’m tired of the mayhem that comes with 6 AM start times, elbow throwing and not getting the 1 of 6 ultra-low priced items I went to buy leaving me frustrated, tired and bruised.

Isn’t the idea that a store employee died today proof enough that door busters have gone too long and too far? In fact, the use of ultra-low priced items to draw traffic has gotten earlier and earlier (Kohl’s went to 4 AM to beat most other retailers this year) with ever more participating members (Old Navy with a door buster?; TigerDirect.com doesn’t even have doors!). Along with the hype, a whole new information economy is being built on top of Black Friday.

A great example of your massive success in creating Black Friday is shown by bfads.net, a website that aggregates all retailer’s information at one site and approaches the popularity of the NY Times:

Retailers, your success is measurable: One estimate puts expected shoppers this weekend at 128MM which is almost half of all US citizens.

Being transparent (as consumers, we’re growing to like this idea more and more), this tactic has one main goal for you: Get the total basket of my purchases high enough to justify the loss on the Door Buster. Sure, sometimes you can partner with a manufacturer to make money on the product being used to lure me in, but most consumer electronics, including highly popular LCD TV’s and digital cameras, earn retailers less than 10% for you and most manufacturers already live on razor thin margins. I’m on to these games and would rather just shop for the hot price on the hot shopping day leaving my other purchases for other times. Sorry.

Like BOGO’s and other high-low pricing strategies of the past, the door buster is becoming its own enemy. When we consumers get the weekend circulars for Black Friday, like Pavlov’s dog, we focus on what hot items will be almost given away for our attention. The earlier the better, as we may go somewhere else with our credit cards. In these value marketing times, how many of this weekend’s customers will buy enough in that store visit to cover the lost margin on a $600 TV that was marked down $300? I stress ‘this visit’ because these busters aren’t building loyalty, they are training us to jump at low prices.

Here’s an alternative use for those margin dollars: Use all that consumer data you’ve been accumulating on us and offer up a customized Black Friday event for us, your most loyal customers, via an exclusive invitation at an exclusive time that doesn’t have obnoxious shoppers and the stress that goes along with it. If you feel you need to give us more incentives to show up, then hand us a coupon that gives us a target for a reasonable spend level based on what we’ve bought throughout the year (instead of skewing to the ‘go big’ incentives for everyone that walks in the door like “busters” do today). All of you, major national retailers with names like Target, Wal*Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Safeway and Kroger, know how often we come in, what categories we buy and how much on average we’re spending. Use a scalpel for our dollars instead of a mallet.

Even better, once you create an experience that isn’t about everyone, then you’ve built an experience for us, the ones that you want to build your relationship with. While all those faceless shoppers that storm through the stores seeking the latest super-deal won’t show up, what needs to be asked is this: How many of those shoppers are buying your door busters at ultra-low prices and then just reposting the item on eBay to profit from a your lost margin?

This year is over, but most of you retailers will be planning for 2009 soon. Take a stand, end Door Busters this year and try something completely different. Who knows, we may actually look forward to shopping again.