Recently best buy and future shop offers a rare promotion sale for video gamers: they allow people to trade in their old video games for a new one among the three, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4 or the 10th iteration of the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Ghosts for free, which means the customers can save $60 through this exchange. This promotion creates unexpectedly huge lines in front of the stores across the country, which are comparable to those during boxing days and the new video games promoted were out of stock in less than 45 minutes. 

(the promotion line-up)

The promotion is not actually totally free for the marketers, it is used to create brand awareness in consumers’ mind and also to further promote for upcoming introduction of the major profitable new products such as Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 in the next few months. These new products are supposed to be more profitable compared to the video games traded for during this promotion, but can be bought in various stores besides future shop and best buy. The gaming business launched in 2008 by the company is not fully awared by the customers and by doing this promotion, both companies let the potential consumers realize that it can be a good option to choose future shop and best buy for their video game shopping and therefor generate consumer loyalty to some extent.

(line up for the launch of ps4 in front of the stores in midnight)

In my opinion, this promotion can be seen as a successful marketing example. Its purpose is not to earn the short-time profits but to earn the long-term larger profits. The companies recognized the opportunities and potential profits brought by the promotion and are proved to make a right decision: despite the huge line-ups, social media also gives positive and intensive feedbacks for the promotion, which even further increase the companies’ awareness among potential consumers who don’t have the chance to know the promotion ahead. But still there are some negative side effects of the promotion: the huge line up creates excess demand for cashiers and staffs and therefore hinders the normal routine of operation the stores and scare away customers seeing the long line waiting outside the stores. However these effects are really temporary and even negligible compare to the benefits brought by the promotion– the sharp increase of awareness of the companies’ gaming business, which is proved by the huger line up in front of the stores  for the launch of ps4 in the midnight.

Youtubers appreciate the trade in promotion Here is a video on Youtube: a video gamer got the trade-in promotion and gave positive feedback for it and therefore promote automatically for the companies