Today we did some Christmas shopping the Elmira, NY area. The following is my story of how not to sell a product.
As we went to the different stores in the Arnot Mall and Target and Best Buy, we were mostly looking at tech items – TVs, video game systems, etc. It shocked me when I saw how some of the next generation video game systems were displayed.
I first noticed this phenomenon at EB Games. They had a PS 3 and XBOX 360 on display that you could actually play. Quite a concept. They also had the new Nintendo Wii on display. The Wii is unique in its size and its innovative remote that you actually swing when you’re playing tennis or baseball. It offers a unique game playing experience, but I digress.
You would think with such a unique selling point for a next generation system that you would want to give your customers a chance to play the system. This must not be the case, however, as the system sat there in the case, complete with a black screen. There were even instructions on how to play the demo game, but there was no demo game to be played.
Target was even better. There you could play the PS 3, the Wii was on, but it was just showing the same demo video over and over again. When it came to the XBOX 360, that was where the fun started. It actually had an error message on the screen. The bad one. The one where you have to send the system back and hope Microsoft will replace it for you.
Now if you were an employee and saw this, wouldn’t you turn the system off, or replace it with a functioning system? Instead this 360 says, “Hey come drop your $300-400 on me and you too might be fortunate enough to see this error.”
Best Buy was a similar experience. The PS 3 couldn’t be played, and the Wii was once again showing the demo video.
It just seems to me that if you want to be moving these systems, you should let the customer who is probably going to drop $300-700 on one of these things if they are available as much opportunity to interact with the product as possible.
But hey, what do I know?