Friday, March 20, 2009

Cold Storage- Singapore ( Marketing lesson)

Today, for the 1st time, I experienced what I had actually learnt in class. 
Our Org Behaviour Prof spoke about a company called NORDSTORM- A true story about how far they would go to satisfy their customer

"A person goes to their customer service counter and Say's that he is not happy with the product he has taken and would like to return it. The sales person takes the tyre, ask for the receipt and when the customer say that he might have misplaced it, the sales person just takes the product, asks the customer for the price that the product was bought for with a smile reaches the cash counter and returns him the money", later it was found that NORDSTORM does not deal with any automobile parts. ;)


Something similar happened to my this afternoon. I went to the cold storage ( A mall like the food worlds and the food bazaar's) and I picked up a bag of MILO. The amount mentioned below was $ 5.90 and when I got it billed it showed $7.30. I asked for a clarification and the cashier said that the amount is pre-installed into the system. The store manager was called and when we checked, the MILO was kept on a wrong shelf. It actually costed $7.30. However as I had already bought it, the store manager billed me for $5.90 and also apologised for the mistake.

This is what we call.... Customer Based Marketing and how companies earn their loyal customers.


8 comments:

Unknown said...

good show dude
also nice to know you acknowledge

Insights of life and realisations with kaykay said...

Thanks a lot

Unknown said...

nice..u shud have searched the store for more errors! then it wud be fun shopping. keep an eye open! ;)

Unknown said...

good one brother...Looking forward to see more

Don Z said...

Ha ha...nice yaar...got practical experience..But i wonder what you would have done had you been at the manager's place?

Soham Pablo said...

Hmm....but this would be expected of any store. I have had similar experiences in the good old BTM layout Foodworld, where I convinced the b**ch at the counter that the onions she was selling was bar coded at over the real prices.
Anyway, on a different note this technique was actually used in a different way at a certain private CD store in UK at some point. The store owner knew a certain album of Backstreet Boys wasn't selling well. The guy put his entire stock of that album on a prominent shelf and had a $9.99 sticker on every CD but the first, which carried a $6.99 sticker. Most customers who noticed it bought the CD just thinking it was a mistake in tagging, and that they were screwing the store owner. The store owner used to sell the piece at $6.99 and walk down to the CD shelf and re tag the first CD at $6.99 !! He managed to clear the shelf within a week (about 70 CDs) at $6.99 a piece, relying on customers' delight at the thought they were screwing him !!!!

Insights of life and realisations with kaykay said...

wow Soham... thanks a lot for ur insights too ....:)

Unknown said...
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