Anyone know why Tuesday is the chosen day to release CD’s, DVD’s, video games etc. This seems to be fairly standard in the retail industry, yet I can’t find a satisfactory explaination as to why.
Thanks!!!
I used to run a video store, and the reason given to me was that it gave a head start for weekend sales and helped to prevent a run on supplies. Not sure how that applies to retail-only operations, but when you’re renting videos it helps to release them during the week so that rental periods can be staggered before the weekend rush.
Imagine if a hot movie came out on a Friday, and all your copies got rented out the first day. Come day 2, none of them would be in the store, none would be due back yet, and you’d still have high demand.
Not sure if there’s another explanation though.
Former Hollywood Video register monkey checking in. While movies generally are released on Tuesday (the only exception I can think of in the past year or so is American Wedding, which, I believe, was released on a Friday.), video games generally are released on Friday. For video games, Friday releases made sense; we generally carried few copies of any one title, so they tended to be gone very quickly anyway, and releasing them on Friday ensures that the ones turned in on time (or even two days late) are available for rental next Friday.
i use to be 2ic at a music store in Australia.
CD’s were released on Sunday here. Delivered on friday and then put through the system on the weekend. But you couldnt put them on the shelf till Sunday otherwise the record companies went crazy.
Not sure the reason never asked
WAG - Movies open in the theaters on Fridays and Wednesdays. DVD’s come out on Tuesdays because people who rent/buy DVDs aren’t *going * to the movies, and the studios don’t want to interfere with the all-important opening box office numbers.
WAG - it gives the stores (especially chains which may be serviced from a central warehouse) an opportunity to get the product on the shelves and allows a full weekend of sales (the most popular time to shop?) to be taken into account for the first week’s sales numbers.
I worked in retail for a while (one of many crappy jobs that got me through college) although it wasn’t a music store. Tuesday is usually the slowest day of the week. Our new stock always arrived on tuesday. That gave us plenty of time to get it all unpacked and the new displays put out during the slow time of the week. By the time the weekend rolls around, you’re so busy that you don’t have time to re-arrange displays and make room for new stuff.
engineer_comp_geek sort of has it.
In music (and movies, and software/games to a lesser extent), the new stock needs to be on the floor on Tuesday, not arriving on the shuttle from the distribution center. So it comes in earlier and sits in the stockroom. Your local Best Buy or equivalent most likely has the new release titles a couple of days early. There is usually a rule against letting them go early, so it’s hard to get them.
I don’t know what the original reason for picking Tuesday was, although I’ve been told that it allows for titles to sell out and have a prayer of restocking before the weekend, which makes sense.
The main reason for Tuesday now is inertia. The big retail chains are used to Tuesdays, as are radio stations. “New release Tuesday” is a part of popular culture, so the customer expects the new releases on Tuesday. This holds true online as well – the etailer I work for (which deals in music/movies/games among other things) sees its second biggest traffic day of the week on Tuesdays, driven largely by music/movie traffic increases. So new titles come out on Tuesday because that’s the day the new titles come out.
We do see rare releases on other days, much as you see some theatrical movies open on days other than Friday. We don’t like it much, as it messes with the schedule – our shuttles move stock from the distribution centers to the stores only a couple of times a week, and a non-Tuesday release of a big title can mess up our planning pretty seriously.
I can attest that the practice goes back into the 1970s at least so I don’t think it’s caused by movie/video schedules. If anything the reverse would be true.
There are many good reasons mentioned above why Tuesdays still work, but I believe it started as a way to allow retail stores to all make sure they have their shipments in before starting sales (to give everyone an equal start).
If store A has a late shipment on Friday, and the hot new release doesn’t show, they won’t get it until later on Monday, and lose out on sales.
The music industry is very serious about not letting stores “jump the gate” and put out releases early, so it goes they would want to be as fair to make sure there are no stragglers either.