It is Black Friday today and for the most part there didn’t seem to be crazy crowds that I have seen years before which can be either because everyone shops online nowadays or people simply don’t have disposable income. But one thing that still remains true is that if one store has a huge lineup it definitely makes people wonder what is going on as it encourages them to want to go in. Most of the stores had no line ups. But some only allowed say 5 people to go in at a time where it created a small que. Enough to generate more attention.
This is versus some places like the Apple stores which always seem busy at these times where they genuinely need to create some crowd control. That makes you wonder if that is a good business strategy to create hype with genuine customers. I know it is actually a thing for some restaurant launches to actually hire people to lineup outside in order to create the illusion of a highly demanded place. I guess you can’t blame them as people start taking and posting pictures online of it to generate more buzz.
There is a risk that this artificial lineup will actually make people leave too as they may not have time to wait if you genuinely had room to fit more people in. Companies sure do a lot to try and generate hype though huh?