Today’s blog will share a few of my opinions and thoughts on a blog posted by Alec, who is a fellow Comm465 student. Specifically, I will comment on his “Future Shop and Best Buy’s Amazing Trade-In Promotion Leaves Consumers Baffled.”
When I first heard of this particular promotion, which allowed consumers to trade in any current generation (Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii U) video game and receive either Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, or Call of Duty: Ghosts in return, I was excited and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My feelings towards this promotion were similar to Alec’s: it seemed too good to be true.
From a marketing standpoint, this promotion was awesome. It had consumers buzzing over it which led them to spread the news of this promotion to all their friends via word of mouth. As Alec stated, it basically spread like wildfire, and many Future Shops and Best Buy’s had customer line-ups which lasted for hours, or were already out of stock of the games by noon. One of my friends had waited in line for over three hours, only to find out that they didn’t have any more games left, similar to Alec’s experience. However, one of the reasons for why they ran out of stock so quickly was that the promotion was unclear to a few Future Shop and Best Buy stores. It turned out that individuals were receiving all three games for the trade-in of one old game, instead of receiving one game for the trade-in of one game. Whoops!
Nevertheless, while many consumers were left unhappy and game-less, Future Shop and Best Buy were still the winners in the end. All of the buzz generated from this promotion was crucial to both companies’ respective marketing plans for the upcoming release of the PS4 and Xbox One. They were both able to position themselves as the top retailer to shop at for video games by creating all of the frenzy surrounding their trade-in program. This marketing technique was clever, as most gamers think of going to EB Games or GameStop when they think of trade-in programs, which is why Best Buy and Future Shop were the winners in the end.
Financial Post Article regarding the subject:
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/11/08/future-shop-offering-new-call-of-duty-assassins-creed-and-battlefield-titles-for-free-with-single-trade-in/?__lsa=9ada-07ee