Getting Schnozzled at Gunpoint

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Every single bottle of wine was available as a 3 for 2 deal, and each bottle had two prices. The effective price you would pay if you bought it in a three for two deal and the full price if you bought it on its own.

So as a consumer, this ham-fisted approach to promotion meant I didn’t feel that the 3 for 2 offer was a bargain, I thought the single bottle price was a con. Here was a non-too-subtle attempt to coerce me into buying three times the amount of wine I really wanted.  

Given that excessive home drinking is being flagged as a health time bomb in the UK I also think that such forceful pressing of higher quantities of alcohol is socially irresponsible. Whatever we may like to think about how we make an independent decision to drink and how much, the likelihood is that having more wine available would lead to higher levels of consumption of what is a potentially addictive drug.

Curiously, I found a press release dating back to March 2008 stating:

“Three-for-two was successful in 2005, but over time we have seen like-for-like decline in a growing market, and customers say single-bottle pricing is too expensive. We will be reintroducing proper promotions.” Single-bottle prices are to be lowered as three-for-two is cut back.

Leaving aside the fact that the company has made the classic mistake of listening to what customers are telling them (rather than test marketing the offer to gauge its effectiveness), and the Dilbert-style justification that something being withdrawn was successful, it seems odd that they are persevering with the promotion a year later.

Even if it does work I would suggest that there might be better ways of communicating the offer so that it didn’t alienate some customers.

I’m not suggesting that life is easy for chains like Threshers: they’re competing with supermarkets that have the regular traffic, lower rents (per square foot) and vastly lower overheads (as a proportion of turnover). But I’m fairly sure that promotions of this kind are not a recipe for long term success.

And, as those of you who have bought my EBook The Secret of Selling will know, there are a number of other ways they could increase sales and profit if they were willing to consider the way in which consumers actually behave, and tailor their retail offer accordingly. Forgive me for not going into details, but I plan to speak to Threshers in the near future and offer them my services.

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