Episode Description:
This is a case study of what NOT to do when creating customer relationships. Walmart, Amazon, and Target have had huge backlash from their inability to executive and fulfill orders for the latest gaming systems. Fueled by the pandemic, new consoles that have been out for over a year have yet to hit store shelves before being gobbled up by scalpers selling them for double the price! And who wins? Walmart and Amazon?!
Action you can take right now:
- Here it is again – customer experience. How can you create an experience for your customer that isn’t miserable? How can you take a supply-chain, inventory issue, or similar high-demand product and actually turn it into something that ADDS VALUE to your customer relationship?
- Come up with three bundle ideas. A core product, that is in high-demand with limited availability. What can you add to the bundle that complements the item and is readily available?
- Can you make an exclusive early access to your best customers?
Episode After-Thoughts
Just in the few days between recording this episode and releasing it, Walmart has had two more drops of PS5 and Xbox consoles. Both additional drops were complete disasters. Website errors, the item immediately marked sold-out the moment it became active, and virtually no one on a live twitter feed actually was able to check out and purchase an item. Why would they do this?
Episode 34 Transcript:
Audio file
why-the-new-ps5-and-xbox-has-walmart-customers-infuriated.mp3
Transcript
00:00:00
Why won’t they learn from their mistakes? And why do legacy systems present such a huge challenge? Let’s learn why the Sony PlayStation five, the Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch are infuriating Walmart customers that and more coming up on the marketing and service.com podcast.
00:00:25
Justin Varuzzo here from marketingandservice.com podcast, the podcast designed to help you build your business by creating incredible customer relationships. If you find value in this episode, please take a moment to follow or subscribe.
00:00:45
And if you want to do me a huge huge personal favor, leave a five star review.
00:00:49
It means so much to me and it’s what helps keep me going and motivated.
00:00:54
I’d love to hear from you. Hit me up on the marketing service.com Facebook page. What marketing challenges are you having with your business and what would you love to learn more about?
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Let me know I want to make a podcast just for you.
00:01:07
In today’s episode, I want to talk a little bit about legacy systems.
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Customer journey.
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Inventory shortages.
00:01:16
And why Walmart customers are infuriated. So if you are into gaming in any capacity or you have children that are into gaming in any capacity, you’re probably aware that last year in 2020 in the fall of 2020, right? Right around this time actually a little sooner. I think it was October.
00:01:37
Sony announced the PlayStation 5 Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X and the Nintendo Switch was released and all of these systems had a huge demand during a pandemic.
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This presented a lot of challenges for the manufacturing of these devices, but at the end of the day.
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You had a huge huge demand and a very limited supply.
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Now we all know that most of these big Christmas presents at that time of year, normally by January.
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You can just walk into the store and pick up any of those things, and at that point the kids that didn’t get it were already disappointed and Christmas was ruined because they didn’t get the new PlayStation Five boy was.
00:02:18
I surprised.
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Now a year later, you still.
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Cannot get a PlayStation five in Xbox Series X or the new Nintendo Switch.
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There were people who were still struggling to get the old one, and now they released a new version which is also sold out just about everywhere.
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This opportunity or problem is something that a lot of big companies have had to contend with.
00:02:40
Amazon, Walmart, GameStop, target.
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These are all the main places that are selling this equipment and these devices and of course the manufacturers themselves.
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Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
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Selling these systems direct.
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And one of the huge challenges is that a lot of people had determined that a great way to make money would be to scalp these systems and what was a little cottage industry has turned mainstream.
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And now when these systems are available for sale, they usually sell out literally within one to two to three seconds.
00:03:16
And what users were finding is that no matter what they did, no matter how fast they were by the time they checked out, the product was sold out and it wasn’t long before most people realized that they were being beaten by.
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Bots bots are automated scripts that run on computers to buy these things automatically for resellers as soon as they become available for sale.
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So because it’s happening at the instant speed of computer technology, you have no chance as a normal human being to get on one of these websites and buy a system.
00:03:47
Now this is not the first time that there’s been bots buying stuff that is in limited supply and high demand in the hopes that scalpers and resellers can make money.
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This has been the longest run that we’ve seen in a long time, and Walmart in particular has had the biggest struggle with coming up with systems.
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Prove it.
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Bots and coming up with systems to ensure their customer has a smooth journey, so I’m focusing on Walmart here now.
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I will say that Target had their fair share of problems.
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Sony Direct had their fair share of problems.
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GameStop had their fair share of problems, but all of them quickly adapted because they wanted to provide a great experience to their.
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Customers you have to remember that the scalper or the reseller, they’re not really your customer.
00:04:33
And the short sighted view is, hey, we’re going to sell all these things.
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We’ll sell it in seconds, and we make a ton of money.
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But if you look at a little bit wider of a view, you realize that when something in that high of demand, you’re going to sell it all and make a lot of money anyway.
00:04:48
Regardless, if you sell it to a bot, a scalper, or a real human being who’s just looking to buy a gift for their children.
00:04:53
This Christmas, so first I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that have happened to alleviate the issues with bots 1 being Sony PlayStation.
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Direct, they realized that this bot issue was a big issue and they slowly implemented changes that would make it increasingly more difficult for bots to make a purchase automatically.
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Simple things like a re captcha.
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We’ve all seen that on a website where you have to type in a little code and it says prove you’re human.
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Those are actually.
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Really hard challenges for computers to figure out.
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The problem is in a check out process.
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It’s also fairly difficult for humans sometimes to figure those out when you look at them and you see a couple of WAVY letters and you wonder if you’ve had too much Scotch and you can’t really get the answer right.
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No matter what you try, we’ve we’ve.
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I think we’ve all been there at least.
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Once retailers are reluctant to use those at checkout because it actually ruins the customer experience.
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So how do you keep things really easy but also make it fair, equitable and prevent automated bots from buying up all the inventory.
00:05:59
One of the things as of right now that Sony PlayStation does when you buy direct.
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Is they are now only doing email invites to people who have a registered account.
00:06:08
They can only buy one system under that email address or billing address.
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So this will right away put a damper on bots because unless the bot gets the email, they’re not going to even have the opportunity to try to make them.
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Which is.
00:06:23
The problem is you could be a legitimate user and you simply don’t get the email invite so you don’t even have a chance of buying the system that has a problem of its own because you’ve got some loyal fans, myself included, desperately looking for a PlayStation five, but not willing to pay a penny over murp.
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Being that it’s been difficult to buy, I have not gotten.
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Any of the emails for the past few invites.
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Obviously you see on social media and Twitter and Facebook people saying, hey, I just got my email at 5:00 o’clock.
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They’re going to open this up and you get in the queue.
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You go through a waiting room and you eventually get to a point where if you if they had the invent.
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Sorry and you’ve made it through the process.
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They will hold that item in your cart for 10 minutes to give you time to checkout.
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Plug in your credit card information and all that stuff where I will say companies like target.
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We’re not doing that target when you would buy a system.
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It would be in stock and whoever checked out first got it.
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It didn’t matter that you already added it to your cart.
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It did not reserve that inventory for you.
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Companies, like Ticketmaster have dealt with this for a very long time and they have a lot of controls already in play.
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If you’ve ever bought a show ticket or a concert ticket from Ticketmaster, you probably know that when you add it to the card, it does stay and says you have to check out within 10 minutes and it does reserve the ticket for you.
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And even with that, it’s still almost impossible to get tickets to big concerts when they come to town through Ticketmaster.
00:07:44
So again, this is not a unique problem to the play station, and it’s not a unique problem to Walmart.
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But what the problem is with Walmart that has infuriated so many customers, a multitude of technical issues, glitches, order cancellations and a lack of communication and transparency that is infuriating.
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Those that are shopping for these systems on Walmart.
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So I’ll say personally, when I tried to go to the Walmart page to buy it when it was live, the page wouldn’t even load.
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Now this is also a common issue that we’ve heard about over the years.
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Even Amazon I remember five or six years ago when the original Xbox came out.
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You know everyone rushing to go buy it at the same time crashed Amazon website, but we have come a long long way in the last five or six years in the technology department where.
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Really no website should ever crash.
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Anymore most websites reside on scalable systems.
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Amazon invented a lot of these systems and have the largest systems on the planet, which 70 plus percent of the Internet resides on Amazon Web Server right now.
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But the beauty of Amazon Web Services is that whether you have 10 users to your website or a million users, you’re only going to pay.
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For the server, use that you’re actually using and because these are giant serve.
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For farms the second you get a million people on the website.
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The computers will Rev up like a car and they’ll give all the processing power you need so your website does not crash.
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But somehow Walmart still has this issue with the website crashing.
00:09:15
With that said, Sony has had plenty of issues as well even with their bot proof or bot reductive.
00:09:22
Process they still have issues with pages not loading properly.
00:09:27
People getting in the queue getting to the last second after waiting for 40 min.
00:09:30
And then when it transfers to where they’re supposed to purchase, they get kicked and they get booted out to the beginning of the process again.
00:09:36
And at that point they’ve missed out.
00:09:38
There’s no way they can wait another 40 minutes, because now it’s going to be sold out.
00:09:41
One of the things that has Walmart customers furious is the fact that those who did get through they got through.
00:09:49
They got through the process.
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They checked out in time they beat the bot, they add it to their cart.
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They pay their card, is charged, the order is final.
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The item is going to ship within a few days and then it doesn’t ship and then a week goes by.
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It doesn’t ship then two weeks goes by.
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It still doesn’t show.
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Then three or four weeks later, they get an email that say we’re sorry we have to cancel your order.
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We have no inventory yet.
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The day before that email goes out, they had another drop of devices where they did the exact same thing, but you didn’t jump in on that one because you knew you already had one coming to you.
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So you see the unique problem.
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They’re canceling orders for people who successfully purchased one a month ago, but then selling those units to a new group of people.
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And when you think about it, it doesn’t make sense.
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I don’t think they’re doing this intentionally.
00:10:39
I don’t know what the end game would be to just make a bunch of angry customers for no reason.
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But I also don’t know why they would cancel the orders in the 1st place and even put themselves in that position.
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Why can’t they have a little bit of a hold back?
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I mean there’s a lot of solutions.
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To this problem, and that’s why I want to talk about legacy systems for a moment.
00:11:00
Walmart is an interesting company because as one of the largest retailers in the world and one that has been one of the largest retailers in the world, for a very, very long time, much longer than Amazon.
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One of the things that made Walmart so successful is they created incredible computer systems and technological advancements.
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In logistics, procurement, fulfillment, warehousing, distribution, trucking, all of these things when you see those trucks on the road going to different and from warehouses to different stores, it’s a very impressive and complicated system that Walmart really made.
00:11:37
And perfected before any other companies did this because they spent so much money on that Amazon was able to come invent a new company with new logistics from scratch that catered to an ecommerce world because all the 80s systems that Walmart had, it made it exponentially more difficult if not.
00:11:58
Virtually impossible for them to compete and catch up at the same rate as Amazon now Amazon has been around for a long time now.
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Walmart’s been working on their online business for the past 20 years and it’s still nowhere near as fluid and as efficient as Amazon’s ecommerce system.
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And it’s because Walmart still has thousands of legacy stores, they still have thousands of trucks going from distribution warehouses to stores.
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They still have thousands of warehouses receiving products shipping product.
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They now have the ecommerce element.
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It’s a very complicated business structure.
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When you really break it down, it’s important to consider.
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Even as a new business, Amazon will be in the same boat.
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Something will turn sometime in the next three years.
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Five years, 10 years, maybe 20.
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Years, but something new will come along from scratch, and because Amazon system and their AWF platform and their ecommerce platform is so massive and connected in so many ways, it will be virtually impossible for them to change and adapt their systems at the same speed as someone.
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Developing the new system from scratch now I don’t know what that.
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System is yet.
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And we won’t find out for a while.
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Probably not for a long time, but.
00:13:14
It’s something to keep in mind as a small business. The reason I tell this story, this podcast is all about customer relationships, building incredible customer relationships, growing your business through incredible customer relationships. Taking $600 from someone, making them wait a month for their product, canceling it.
00:13:33
A day after you shipped one for someone who bought theirs a month later is a real slap in the face and legacy systems aside, I just don’t understand how that is happening at an organization as large as Walmart, it’s really in.
00:13:50
So let’s talk about some ways that other companies have mitigated this.
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GameSpot has done something intriguing, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
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What GameStop has done?
00:14:01
Is they’ve required in many instances of them shipping these consoles that you have one of their premium accounts.
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Think of it as Amazon.
00:14:09
Prime but at GameStop you get you pay a fee. I don’t know what it is offhand. I want to say it’s maybe $30 a year.
00:14:16
You get some additional discounts, bonuses, and the opportunity to be in the line to purchase one of these new con.
00:14:24
It’s of course a nonrefundable fee whether you get a new PlayStation or Xbox or not, you are not going to get a refund on that $30 fee. The second thing that GameStop did.
00:14:36
And is doing is bundling those consoles with a lot of other stuff.
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It’s not stuff that you don’t need.
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But it might be stuff you don’t want.
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So for example you will have an Xbox bundled with an extra controller along with three games and maybe something else pair of headphones.
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Now the average order value jumps from let’s say 499 to $1200. Now you’re not paying a premium on any of these things, you’re not buying them.
00:15:04
Scalpers. They are all being sold at retail. You’re getting the deal you would have gotten if you bought the console three games and a pair of headphones. What you’re not getting is a PlayStation four 500.
00:15:14
So in a way, this excludes people who are on a tight budget that maybe want to buy the console for Christmas and then in January maybe they get a gift card so they can buy a game and then a month later maybe they buy another game.
00:15:24
Or maybe they have the console they wanted the console, but they’re going to play some of their older games on the new console they already have from a previous system.
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Again, I ethically speaking, I don’t think.
00:15:34
I have a problem with this and I will say that GameStop has made a tremendous amount of money selling these $30 men.
00:15:42
Ships just for the right to purchase a product.
00:15:46
If you’re a gamer and you actually use it, the reason I don’t think that I’m necessarily opposed to this is because the membership program is decent, very much like Amazon Prime is simply just worth it.
00:15:58
If you buy a couple things a year, you’re going to save on shipping immediately.
00:16:02
And recoup the money that you spend on Amazon Prime.
00:16:05
Plus the tremendous value that’s provided through Amazon Prime with the Prime TV and prime you.
00:16:11
Music and prime audiobooks and prime podcasts and prime prime prime prime.
00:16:15
I mean, there’s so many benefits that they give to you that it makes the decision to purchase that a no brainer.
00:16:22
And if you’re a gamer and you’re shopping at GameStop, it’s a no brainer. The $30 that you’re going to get that back very, very quickly, and even in some of the bundles I’ve seen that.
00:16:31
They even give gift cards which is more or less cash back in in a way, although again it’s forcing you to go back there and it’s creating better customer retention.
00:16:41
And that’s a great way for customer retention is and we know it with loyalty programs and bonus clubs.
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Get your card punched when you get your coffee.
00:16:48
In the morning, those systems are designed to create retention and to create loyalty and to create repeat business.
00:16:56
And most people know if you get them back in the store to buy the coffee, then they’re going to see the Donuts and they’re going to saying, I’ll take the the Jelly with powdered sugar, and then I will shamefully go to my car, eat it, and then get caught.
00:17:09
When I get home because I have powdered sugar all over my shirt, these are really important lessons to take in during a supply chain crisis.
00:17:18
I’ve talked a little bit about the supply chain crisis in the past few podcasts, but it’s worth reiterating.
00:17:24
These problems wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the supply chain was functioning normally.
00:17:31
Now chances are with the gaming console it would still be like this, but we wouldn’t be having this discussion because most businesses aren’t always struggling to get product.
00:17:40
Usually you might have one thing at a seasonal item that sells out, and then it’s hard.
00:17:44
To get again, but you’re never looking at shelves that are just empty across the board because you just can’t get anything.
00:17:50
This means when you do get product, it is more valuable because we all know that when you’re selling a product, it’s all about yourself through rates, right?
00:18:00
How many times are you going to turn this inventory?
00:18:02
You need to turn that inventory three or four or five times.
00:18:05
In a year in most instances, to be profitable and to be a healthy business, if you can only get one turn worth of inventory.
00:18:13
In essence, that means that in a lot of ways you have to charge five times more for that inventory that you do get to ensure that you are in the same position you’d be in if you were able to turn the inventory five times.
00:18:26
Now I know that’s not fair to just say you have to Jack up your prices 5X to make ends meet.
00:18:32
Because obviously you’re going to upset a lot of customers and they’re going to realize and feel gouged.
00:18:36
If you do that.
00:18:37
So what you can do though, is really take a lesson from GameStop.
00:18:43
This company has obviously had an interesting history over the last two years.
00:18:47
They did the right thing here.
00:18:49
If you can create value.
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And you can increase your average order value.
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Think about how you can do that.
00:18:56
If you have something that’s super valuable and you have something that’s easy to get that go along with it.
00:19:02
Maybe bundling it and forcing the bundle is not a bad idea, as long as you’re not doing it and completely ripping off the customer.
00:19:08
If you were to bundle a PlayStation game, that’s 50 bucks.
00:19:12
But charge $500 for it along with the Xbox. Now you’re just stealing. Essentially, you’re no better than this.
00:19:18
Upper, but if you can actually just convince someone, hey if you want to buy this product, these 5 accessories are included.
00:19:25
There’s no premium, you’re just going to pay what you would normally pay for these accessories, but we’re going to bundle all this together so you have everything you need, and that’s the only way we’re selling this right now.
00:19:33
At least you get the added benefit of the average order value substantially increasing. Let’s be honest, you’re not going to 5X it, but in the case of GameStop they’re easily 2X.
00:19:44
They’re going to double their average order value through this whole season as and more than double, because not only are they selling 100% of accessories on top of the retail price of the console, but they’re also selling a $30 membership fee that you have to.
00:19:58
Get to even.
00:19:59
Be eligible to purchase that so the $30 is almost a Gimme. That’s a tough one.
00:20:04
You know, in most businesses you’re probably not going to come up with a subscription plan or a loyalty program that you have to charge money for.
00:20:12
If you can, that is great.
00:20:13
Do it any type of loyalty program and any subscription we’ve had guests on that have talked about the power of subscriptions.
00:20:20
The subscription model is huge right now.
00:20:22
If you can come up with a way to.
00:20:24
Create a monthly perpetual, consistent revenue stream.
00:20:29
Not only will your cash flow be healthier, your.
00:20:32
Be healthier, you’ll be healthier because you will have a more reliable and stable income all year around and your valuation as a business will be much higher should you ever need loans.
00:20:44
Or if you’re looking for investments, those things make a huge difference, so I’m not going to say you can’t have a subscription model.
00:20:52
I’m just saying that.
00:20:53
Make sure if you do that, there is a specific value targeted to your ideal customer and make it worth their while.
00:21:04
And as I said, with the case of GameStop, if you’re not a gamer, I’m not really a gamer.
00:21:08
I don’t even know why I think I just want a PlayStation Five because I can’t get one, and that upsets me.
00:21:13
I’ll play it.
00:21:14
My wife knows I’ll play, I’ll play my PlayStation for you know, two hours on Christmas Day and then I will wait until Thanksgiving of the next year when I have a day off and I’ll play for another two hours.
00:21:26
And to me that four hours a year is worth it.
00:21:30
I love it.
00:21:31
Two hours of gaming.
00:21:32
It’s fantastic and of course I use.
00:21:34
I use all the media features and.
00:21:36
Some other things that are not related to gaming, but I do not want a $30 GameStop membership. What do you think about this whole supply chain issue?
00:21:44
Let me know I’m curious.
00:21:46
Are you having issues getting product?
00:21:49
Are trucks not showing up our shipments getting delayed or the holiday is going to be a disaster because you have no inventory?
00:21:54
Did you plan for this?
00:21:55
Were you able to get inventory?
00:21:57
Early on did you have to pay for it? I’m just curious how you’re tackling the supply chain issues. Let me know. Shoot me an email justin@marketingandservice.com. That’s J.
00:22:07
Tinhat marketing and service.com. The bottom line here is that it’s just frustrating that after so many years in this problem, being persistent whenever there’s a hot product, a company like Walmart should really have it together.
00:22:22
Something that Best Buy has done to fight this is they also have a Q and they’re forcing a local pickup.
00:22:27
Again, for a single unit.
00:22:28
So in this case, if you buy one of these from Best Buy, you get in the queue you purchase it, they will not ship it to you.
00:22:35
You have to go to the local store to pick it up again.
00:22:38
This greatly reduces bots because if you’re running a bot in California.
00:22:43
You know you’re not gonna be able to buy a console in New York and then go pick it up.
00:22:47
It’s just not worth it.
00:22:48
It doesn’t make sense.
00:22:49
You’re going to be limited to a 50 mile range, and chances are even if you are a bot, you’re only going to get one unit.
00:22:55
It’s very unlikely that you are going to be a bot and have actual people be able to go pick up these units in any.
00:23:03
Capacity that would be detrimental to an average citizen from going online and buying one of these consoles.
00:23:09
So that’s one way that Best Buy is preventing the bots.
00:23:13
Amazon is in a little bit different of a city.
00:23:16
Amazon just goes in stock and out of stock.
00:23:18
They really don’t promote the consoles.
00:23:19
They don’t send email invites.
00:23:21
You don’t know when it’s going to go live.
00:23:23
They don’t announce it, it’s just kind of luck of the draw.
00:23:25
Chances are bots are buying all of them.
00:23:27
Amazon is not doing a good job of stopping bots.
00:23:30
I don’t think they really care.
00:23:32
One of the other things that are interesting specifically.
00:23:35
About Walmart and Amazon is that they are also enabling and profiting from the scalpers and resellers.
00:23:43
And that’s something that’s important to keep in mind when someone buys a PlayStation Five from Walmart.
00:23:50
For 499 and then they go on Walmart and sell it for 1099 as a third party seller. Walmart is going to get 15% of that sale when it’s done. So for every $1000.
00:24:02
PS5 being sold on Walmart, Walmart collecting another $150 profit on that user and I’m going to bet that $150.
00:24:11
Profit is much greater than the profit they get when they just simply sell a console direct, so that’s something to keep in mind too.
00:24:18
There’s also this odd dichotomy between serving the resellers and that.
00:24:23
Use that as a third party channel to sell stuff.
00:24:25
Amazon does the same thing.
00:24:27
A huge chunk of their business is third party sellers.
00:24:30
One of the beauties of Amazon is a business is that you can sell on Amazon directly to their customers.
00:24:36
They’ll drive the traffic and you pay them 15% Commission you sell on Walmart, you pay 15% Commission. You pay you sell on eBay, you’re going to pay about a 15% Commission.
00:24:47
When we started this, I said what’s the end game here?
00:24:50
Why would Walmart cancel orders?
00:24:52
Sell the product again?
00:24:53
I’m not quite sure why they.
00:24:54
What’s happening but keep in mind the one thing that sets Walmart and Amazon apart from someone like GameStop is GameStop is not having third party sellers directly sell consoles on their website.
00:25:07
I’ll also say that Walmart makes this incredibly confusing because it’s as if every single seller who lists a.
00:25:14
Bundle at an extreme price.
00:25:16
Gets their own skew in their own listings, so if you go to Walmart’s website and you just type Sony PS5 you’ll see hundreds of listings for PS5.
00:25:23
‘s and it’s very confusing.
00:25:25
You don’t even know what’s legitimate and what’s not.
00:25:27
It’s hard to tell if it’s a third party seller.
00:25:29
This happens on Amazon as well.
00:25:31
They really obscure the fact most of the time that you’re buying from a third party seller, and sometimes you’re not going to get.
00:25:36
What you think you’re going to get?
00:25:37
It’s a common.
00:25:39
It’s a common scheme, and again, Amazon doesn’t have a lot of motivation to stop it from happening.
00:25:44
And there’s ways to stop this.
00:25:45
As well.
00:25:46
eBay had a brand registry program back in the day.
00:25:49
I don’t know if they still have it, but you could register your brand of a product that you manufacture.
00:25:55
And it would give you ultimate control of that product on their platform.
00:26:00
So for example, Sony could say we only sell and distribute Playstations to target Best Buy, Walmart and Amazon, and that would be the list of authorized sellers that could sell on any one of those platforms, right?
00:26:14
So if you saw.
00:26:15
A PlayStation five on eBay. And it was listed as new IT could only come from one of those few sellers, and if someone tried to list a PS5AS new IT would give an error and it would say we’re sorry you’re not an authorized dealer for this item and we’re not going to allow it on our platform. You can sell it as used, but you’re not going to be able to sell it as new.
00:26:33
That was a a program that eBay created, and again I don’t know if it’s still there or not. I haven’t done a lot on eBay recently, but it was a brilliant program that allowed manufacturers to control and prevent these things from getting out of control because you have to realize not only does this have a negative effect on Walmart, but Walmart’s behavior.
00:26:54
It has a negative effect on.
00:26:56
Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo.
00:26:58
Somehow you relate the whole process of being sour and you want to blame everybody.
00:27:04
You’re saying well, why?
00:27:05
Why is Sony making it so hard to get one of these?
00:27:07
Why can’t they just make more?
00:27:08
And why can’t Microsoft just make more?
00:27:10
Why can’t they just sell them all direct through an equitable system?
00:27:14
Why do they have to keep these retailers in the loop?
00:27:16
And the more and more you go through this process of trying to find one of these things and can’t get it, the more and more angry.
00:27:21
Three, you become at the entire chain, right?
00:27:24
Then you start getting angry at UPS.
00:27:25
Well, you know this shipped yesterday I was supposed to have it today.
00:27:28
Now it’s the later day UPS is terrible and before you know you hate everyone in the entire supply chain and you’re angry and you’re furious at all of them.
00:27:35
So the lesson to be learned here.
00:27:37
One yes.
00:27:39
If you’ve got something that’s in very limited supply.
00:27:41
It is not wrong to not cut deals or give those items away because you’re not going to be able to replace them and sell them again.
00:27:49
It’s also not right or fair to charge some exorbitant price or premium over murp like we’re seeing in the car industry right now with with franchise car dealers selling cars for over murp because they’re so hard to get to me.
00:28:03
That’s it just seems unethical to do that as a, you know, as a scalper, that, yeah, you’re a scalper.
00:28:09
The word scalper has a negative connotation to it.
00:28:12
You can get away with it.
00:28:13
You’re not focused on customer service when you’re scalping someone, as in a franchise automotive dealership charging over MSRP.
00:28:21
That just seems to rub me the wrong way. No different than if Target Best Buy or Walmart was charging $1000 for a PlayStation.
00:28:28
They just wouldn’t do it that.
00:28:29
That would really be bad, and I’m not even sure if it’s if it’s legal.
00:28:33
That could be that could be considered usury, possibly in some states to do that, but nonetheless the lesson to be learned is if you have something in limited.
00:28:41
Supply think of ways to increase your average order value and increase the customer experience at the same time, there’s no reason to sacrifice the customer journey because of limited supply.
00:28:52
If you know it’s something you’re going to sell.
00:28:54
Maybe send invites to your best customers first.
00:28:57
Your highest, most rewarding customers 1st and say hey listen, I want to give you guys first dibs on this.
00:29:03
I’ve got 10 of such and such, and I want you to be the first to have it and let them have, you know, let’s say the weekend you know we’re going to put this live.
00:29:12
Here’s a coupon to give you access to the thing.
00:29:14
And you have the weekend to buy this and great. And if by Sunday it’s all sold out, perfect if on Monday you still have some left, OK, take the next step of customers, maybe the next 10% of your best customers, send another and say hey listen, I got good news.
00:29:26
We still have a few of these left and I want to give.
00:29:28
This special consideration, because you’ve been a loyal custom.
00:29:32
Walmart could easily do this.
00:29:34
I don’t know what the big deal is.
00:29:35
They could reward their best customers and give them an invite to buy a PlayStation.
00:29:39
And again, if it doesn’t work and and they don’t sell out, they know they can just flip the switch turn on.
00:29:44
It’s going to be sold out in a second anyway, so again, it’s just really taking a moment to think about what’s the best way to boost order value boost.
00:29:52
Value to the customer.
00:29:54
And maybe in a situation like this, it’s a great opportunity to reward a loyal customer with something they really want and make them feel special.
00:30:03
That’s all I got for you today. Thanks so much for listening again. If you enjoyed this episode like subscribe hit Me up on Facebook.
00:30:13
At marketingandservice.com, if you want to join the Facebook page, you can find us over at marketingandservice.com on Facebook. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll catch you on the next one.