Happy 4th of July for all the American readers. I do find it interesting how even though it is a US holiday there are so many businesses here that offer sales and discounts that revolve around the occasion today. It’s almost like people just have to think of any event to attach a sale to in order to make people spend their money.

Guess it helps the consumer in many ways since the assumption is that people with free time are ready to buy things and companies will try to outdo each other price wise to get your business. One person told me that these are one of the best days to see so many free events too where you would normally have to pay to do so. Celebrating without having to spend a fortune I guess.

Today I got an e-mail from a store that was having a sale of some sort. The funny thing was that their marketing ploy was to simply not list the price of the items. Instead, they use a tagline such as a “price too low to list” routine where you have to actually go to the store to find out. This is a very risky way of getting people into the store I’d say as the expectations are probably so high that it is bound to disappoint.

To me it seems like it is less risky only if people normally go to the store on a regular basis as it is just a little something extra to lookout for. I am almost inclined to say that a limited quantity tactic would be a little more effective in the long run as in those cases you tend to have an expectation where if you didn’t get there early you are out of luck. In this case unless the price was truly rock bottom a person would probably be disappointed.

It’s going to be a long weekend week here as a result of a holiday and immediately I was bombarded with a ton of e-mails from various companies that were advertising about its holiday sales. The thing is this isn’t exactly that is oriented around gifts either. But regardless so many companies try to invent a reason for you to shop at their store which in some ways seems a little silly. Example, some of them seem like they put no effort into the marketing literature as all it reads is “Buy a new monitor for the holiday” type of phrases.

I remember a person telling me before that he felt people always wanted to buy something during a long weekend since most people get a holiday pay of sort and are therefore inclined to spend. So you are essentially giving them an excuse to spend their money as they can semi justify a purchase if you put something on sale.

In many ways that is probably true. I’m just surprised at how these simple things work many times for businesses.

Today a person was telling me that she was so shocked to see how cheap various items were at a supermarket just before the store was closing up. For example, items such as freshly packed meat. She was saying how just a few hours before the product was about 70% more expensive. That is not uncommon as in many cases businesses would simply throw them away and so it only makes sense to try and sell it to make at least some money. I guess a pizza restaurant would be the best example as you don’t exactly want to keep a freshly baked pizza overnight and then try to re-heat and resell it the next day.

I often find that local grocery stores that sell these types of items are usually the best place to find these types of deals as large franchises usually have these very black and white rules on how they must simply dispose the items. Usually that is to prevent people from abusing it such as employees purposely say packaging more in the day just so they can get it at a discount later. Good way to save money though for the regular consumer.

I was looking at this company where all of its employees have this site that people can buy discounted products and services from where it would be like everyone can buy things at employee prices. The interesting thing was that they actually encourage employees to give their friends and family members these discounts.

I was just thinking how this was kind of smart from the company as it’s almost like getting your regular employees to be commissioned sales people as well. While that may seem like a normal company tactic, in this instance it doesn’t come across as apparent since this is a pretty large company that most people probably have to get their services from anyways so it just seems like you are giving people an insider discount of sort.

In reality it’s almost like you are doing the work for the company in trying to acquire and retain existing customers. For example, ordinarily a large business would have departments dedicated to things like offering people special discounts to retain customers or to take them from other carriers. You can imagine the expenses involved. This way it’s almost like you get to hire that department at no extra cost.

I guess designing a sales tool that appears to be an incentive program on the outside is how you could label this. It’ definitely one method that most people don’t feel apprehensive in participating in.