What is with these TV ads that sell products only by mail order or only at one retail chain? How do the manufacturers benefit from limiting availability? My attitude is that if they don’t want me to actually see it before I buy they must know I wouldn’t buy it and so I don’t. As for the “available only…”, I saw something advertised that way for a hardware chain that chooses not to operate in Quebec (some chains don’t want to get involved in bilingualism–tant pis for them). Again, how do manufacturers benefit from this?
If you only sell mail order you have full control over the price and it’s much simpler to run a business that way. The downside is you will lose sales. For many years Dell only sold via mail order but now they have mall kiosks and also put their stuff in some stores.
Selling by mail also allows charging (usually hefty) non-refundable shipping and handling charges, which I expect increase total profit significantly. Usually these products end up in stores after a while, but I imagine the sellers try to tap the maximum-profit mail-order market first.
Sometimes, they don’t have a choice. They want to offer their product at well-known stores but can’t get the retailers’ corporate buyer to make a bulk purchase and stock their shelves with it.
For example, even though Wal-Mart is very big, even they don’t have unlimited shelf space. They have to turn down many manufacturers products to make room for items they believe will actually sell and be profitable.
If you’re a small, new, or not-very-well established company, I would imagine it could be difficult to get your product(s) placed in stores.
Grocery stores are super hard to get your product into. Every inch of space is already taken by a product so if your product goes in another product gets reduced or is removed.
Sometimes they *are *available in stores, despite the tag line. My local Bed Bath & Beyond has an entire “Not Available In Stores” section of their store selling Snuggies and Sham-Wows.
Also, when you buy stuff like that, like that professor guy “try my product”, its a scam. You think you are buying one (or buy one get one free) but you are actually signing up for a subscription that there is no easy way to cancel other than cancelling the credit card it gets billed to.
I believe those sections are called “As Seen on TV”
The secnd part has not been answered, although I guess the answer is similar. I still wonder if a startup can afford a national TV ad.
I forgot to mention it, but another reason I am not inclined to play is that they never tell you what the S&H fee is.
This has been my experience too. One of the George Foreman (sp?) grills was at WalMart *before *it was available *only *on TV.
It also gives the impression that the item is scarce or hard to acquire. This can make it more desirable to some shoppers. No, it’s not rational.
Very often the ads/sales for the start-up are being managed by a relatively well-established direct-sales company in exchange for a share – the late Billy Mays and one of his fellow infomercial loudmouths hosted a weekly show last season on Discover that had a lot of startups (or would-be comebackers) going to those companies to try to get them on board to promote and distribute their products. Looked a lot like a record company taking a chance on a new act, they “audition” various hopefuls, then work with the most promising ones to tweak the product or the presentation and launch an initial ad buy, most often targeted by regional (buying time from the local stations, rather than from the networks) or by audience-segment (niche cable channels) market. If that gets legs, then they go national.
The single-store strategy is a cross-promotional deal with the store chain, the product maker offers to increase traffic into the store by granting exclusivity of an item that has proved desirable on the direct-ad channel, the store offers to pitch that maker’s products to their brick-n-mortat market segment.
Maybe. But I would bet that the model you saw at Wal-Mart was a different one made especially for Wal-Mart with numerous changes from the one advertised on tv. That way you can never directly compare prices since the features and quality are so different.
Our mall has a “As Seen on TV” store filled with stuff.
We should also consider that some of these products might look a lot more appealing in the controlled circumstances of an ad on TV - and look like cheap junk in a store.
However, it can also work the other way. Many people are automatically suspicous of “not available in any store at any price” items since they have a tendency of being overhyped, overpriced, poorly manufactured, too-good-to-be-true, ultimately useless pieces of junk. Also, unlike items sold in a store which can be physically examined by the consumer beforehand and easily returned it they’re defective, sending back a mail-bought item is often such a PITA that it’s not worth the effort. And even if you do try to mail the POS item back, there’s always the likelihood the company either will cite some small and finely printed clause in the sales agreement to get out of the refund or will have suddenly gone out of business. Granted, purchasing goods by mail has gotten less risky than it did in the pre-internet days but the bad reputation of these goods still remains.
When you sell direct you also have at least 1 less middle man taking away from your margin, usually 2 - a distributor and a final retailer. Most manufacturer’s would rather have the volume if they could develop the channels and can afford to scale up to it, but direct sales are a good way to keep your margins high for a new company.
I remember reading an article about why many bands were trying to get exclusive deals with Wal-Mart after the success AC/DC and the Eagles had with such deals. It pointed out that the bands got prime displays with a large range of catalog titles and merchandise, plus prominence in Wal-Mart circulars, for making the CD available only at Wal-Mart.
If something in an ad seems too good not to try (yeah, right) and you’re going to get one anyway, it’s worth it to do a Google search for the widget. It will almost certainly be offered through more than one mail order catalog and the “shipping and handling” prices can vary enormously. A ten-dollar charge in the TV ad can be $2.98 in the “Widgets that Work!” listing.
Of course, the catalog folks will inundate your postal-mailbox with wonderful offers forever, so unless you love widgets, it’s best of all to wait a season or two and pick it up at the flea market for a couple of dollars.
I’ve worked commercial broadcast for 40 years (as of this month). The chances are the infomertial you’re watching is a “PI” for per inquiry. The station is paid by the vendor according the the business it stirs up.
Several of our radio clusters are running PI’s right now. The same commercial is running on all of them, but each station has a different 800 number. That’s one way to keep track of who gets what.