People love bargains. Lower prices get them excited. A Checkers supermarket opened recently near an upmarket estate and the specials on offer were incredible. In fact Kerry Gold butter was selling at an incredible half price special. One woman who does baking, for instance, bought 50 of the 500 g butter blocks. Shoppers went crazy. Even a shopper who normally doesn’t go bananas about specials bought 10 blocks.
Unfortunately this outrageously fantastic special only lasted one day. But it was enough to give customers of the Checkers supermarket, newly opened in their market suburb, to have much to talk about for a long time. Plus the generosity of Checkers and its suppliers will not go unnoticed for the future. In this case the reduced pricing was deliberate and had a specific aim to draw in customers from the upmarket area who may not have shopped at Checkers before rather opting for Woolworths or Pick ‘n Pay.
But here’s a price reduction example where it’s not meant to be but because of the slackness, arrogance and ineptitude of the staff of this large retail chain (which will remain nameless), their pricing errors are losing a lot of money to customers. I went into one of their stores recently and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a product marked at half price. There was no special. This was not old stock. It was a 50% or half price mistake on the part of the store. I just wonder how many people are going to buy that item without knowing that it is a special and those who may know that it is a huge pricing error and will buy up as many of the product as they possibly can.
Do you have a trustworthy, solid and robust pricing system in your small retail business?
If you don’t you could be losing a lot of money like this large retail store. It’s not only pricing errors that are costing them money but the attitude of their staff is chasing customers away. Don’t let it happen in your small business – it could eat away and corrode your profits. In these times it’s important not to have a leaky ship. Do what you must as soon as possible to plug any holes.
