Just something I’ve wondered. On a lot of infomercials the announcer will say “This is ordinarily $100 but if you call in the next 30 minutes it’s only 60!” (or you get two for one, or you get free shipping, or some incentive… but it’s “only good in the next 30 minutes!”)
I can’t imagine anyway to alert the call centers that there’s been a 3 a.m. infomercial on a local channel in Fargo or Louisville or wherever, so just out of curiosity are there really time limits or is this just a sales pitch? And if it is just part of the spiel, does it have to be worded in a certain way to avoid possible legal repercussions?
The call centers obviously post the times they recieved the call, and provided the appropriate discount.
The callers are tracked by address.
The “ask for discount in next 30 minutes” allows the company selling the goods to measure which markets are hottest, and what stations are being watched.
This lets them plan their marketing/promotion with data on response via time and area.
In a similar vein, I’ve seen a number of mailed offers that imply (or perhaps even state) that you must reply within ten days of receipt to get the deal. Of course there’s no postmark on the envelope (bulk mail), no date on the letter, and no way in hell they know when I received it.
Essentially they’re trying to jolt you into action, knowing that if you put it off you’re likely to either forget about it or realize you can easily live without it.
I think this is exactly right. They may be tracking the advertisement’s impact, but I highly doubt you wouldn’t get the deal if you called in late.
It is the same sort of tactic car salesmen would use: emphasize that if you don’t sign up right this second you’ll lose a great deal. The more time spent by the customer thinking about the deal without the high pressure sales tactics or television advertisement, the greater the chance of them realizing that the car is a bad deal or that they don’t need to pay three easy payments of $29.99 for a piece of miscellaneous plastic crap.
I heard an ad that asked only those whose last names ended in A to M call today. It told those poor N to Z folks that their chance would come tomorrow. Out of curiosity I called. I told them I was Bob Zimmerman. I was told an exception could be made for me. I hung up.
That’s exactly what I’ve always thought about these claims. The bonus you get isn’t actually a bonus - it’s the bundle of products the company wants to sell, and the price advertised as the price you pay if you call within x minutes is just the same as the price paid by any other customer buying the product from that company. They simply want to make you believe you have to call as fast as possible, so you don’t think about the purchase a second time.
Just the other day, I noticed one commercial that had a little ticking clock on the bottom of the screen. “Only XX:XX Left!” it said. Of course, the commercial itself never mentioned any kind of time limit, and since the clock’s text itself didn’t refer to anything specific, it was absolutely meaningless. Left in what? This commercial break? Until my milk expires? Before the sound from that lightning bolt reaches me? What?
Of course, as they said above, it was nothing more than a ploy to get people to act quickly; it just seemed like a rather sloppy one to me.
I’d guess it was 100% sales pitch. If they were tracking responses to particular stations (and so many run on late night basic cable where everyone sees it) they could do it without the 30 minute bit. Surely the odds of someone buying 5 minutes after a pitch are much greater than someone buying an hour after, so the 30 minute deal is to keep you from thinking you’ll call tomorrow, when you never will. I’d suspect an ad that elicited responses an hour or a day after it ran would be considered more effective than one where the responses fell off.
On a related note, if you call QVC after a sale closes, can you still get the product?
On a related note, I’ve seen ads with some seemingly random number stuck on the end of the web address (like “ginsu1234.com”) and assume they are using that number in the web address to do some sort of tracking as well.
Well, I’d say you can get the primary answer to that by searching the QVC website. I’ve ordered from there once or twice, just because I feel somehow foolish calling the number on the screen, and the price you get on the web the following day is the same price they advertise on TV; I’d wager it’s there permanently, and the telephone order-takers are plugged into the same system. That being said, it’s certainly possible that they do show some limited-time sales on TV that never make it to the web, but their regular prices all seem to be there, in my experience.
