About three weeks ago, right before school began, I was walking through Coolidge Corner in Brookline, MA with my boss. I worked for a startup company called Textaurant, a company which has created a waitlist management tool for restaurants and patrons. While walking from a business meeting with a restaurant in the area, we came across a small ‘mom and pop’ shop which sold board games. In the window there was a sign which read, “Answer the riddle; receive 10% off on any item.”
At this point I was determined to answer the riddle. My boss tempted me by saying I would never be able to get the answer. At which point he went inside to ask the answer. When he came back outside he told me that the store wouldn’t give away the answer. I stood there a bit longer and began thinking out loud. Within two minutes I knew I had the answer. I told my boss, and he too, knew I had it right. I went inside the store and told the clerk my answer and he congratulated me and told me I could get 10% off any item. I walked around the store a bit, but I knew what I wanted, a game called “Shut the Box,” and old English Pub game I had played in the spring, and had researched to buy online.
When I left the store I was very excited about answering the riddle, but also about my purchase, as I had wanted to buy the game for a while. However when I spoke to my boss, he had a much different view point. While he was impressed that I answered the riddle correctly, his logic was that I didn’t save 10% but rather I spent 90% I hadn’t intended to spend. During this whole ordeal, this thought had crossed my mind, because, it was true- I had no intention of buying the game when I left my house to attend the meeting. When I made it home later that day, I told my father the story and his initial thought was the same as my boss, I had spent 90%, not saved 10%.
As I mentioned before, the thought my father and boss had did also cross my mind. The kicker for me was that I wanted the game. Also the price was cheaper than what I had seen online and I also had the discount, which made it even cheaper. While I am very happy with my purchase and my ability to answer the riddle, I was intrigued by how that marketing strategy was able to drag me into the store.
With the internet as huge a part of everyday life as it is, I would assume board game sales are down. Thus the answer-the-riddle campaign, I felt, was very strong. The campaign feeds into the human ego. Answering the riddle is only successfully completed by a few people; they are likely to feel highly about themselves upon completing it correctly- thereby making them more likely to buy themselves a gift, or at least look around the store, creating foot traffic.
Jordan Jacobson is a senior at Wake Forest University. He is graduating this Spring with a BS in Business and Enterprise Management with minors in both Psychology and Journalism. He is particularly interested in consumer behavior and decision making.
Jordan Jacobson is a senior at Wake Forest University. He is graduating this Spring with a BS in Business and Enterprise Management with minors in both Psychology and Journalism. He is particularly interested in consumer behavior and decision making.
i think you may have a future as a jeopardy contestant.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I had never heard of receiving a discount for answering a riddle before reading this article, I could not help but think about the numerous times that I have bought items that I neither needed or set out with the intention to buy. The first stage of the consumer decision making process is problem recognition, in which we acknowledge that we have a specific need and that we must do something to address or solve this need. While I agree that this is a great starting point, and probably the general rule, we are reminded by purchase decisions like this that there are other factors that contribute to how a consumer arrives at a decision. There are many strategies that vendors use to entice consumers into buying items that do not solve problems or satisfy needs. This shop owner used a riddle and discount to generate a higher sense of consumer involvement, and to secure a sale that would never have happened otherwise. Point of purchase advertising and displays attempt to do the same thing and have become increasingly successful at doing so. As Iain mentioned in his Sourpatch article, we are not immune to impulse buys, especially at convenience stores. Buying to satisfy a particular need makes sense in theory, and should be the rule of thumb, but in reality and as marketers continuously realize, consumers will never be 100% predictable or methodical.
ReplyDelete-Dan Pogoda