marshall 603's

[chessrock]

First off, I'm not a retailer. Where did I say that I was?

. . . If your profits go up by having the lowest price, then it is worth not being able to advertise the price.

Dude, I'm sorry for busting your chops, here. Still, it just kind of sounded like you might be working for Musiciansadvocate the way you were defending them. And it's good that you aren't, because their marketing sucks.

Look, I am a marketing person by trade, and I also have quite a bit of online marketing experience to ad to my credit. That said, I will be the first to say that marketing is nothing more than common sense. I'll admit this.

So here's a bit of Marketing (common sense) 101 for you, as it appears you must have been absent when they covered some of these topics:

1) Your profits do not go UP by having the LOWEST price. No explanation needed there.

2) In order to justify having the lowest price, from a profit standpoint, you need to rely on VOLUME. In other words, you're going to have to sell twice as many units as the guy who's selling the same product at 2 X your profit margin.

And it's still going to cost you the same in shipping cost, so you have to take that in to consideration, as well. So bottom line is you're going to have to sell A LOT.

3) Web shoppers are not the type who like to be bothered with a lot of steps. They are shopping for price, but even more so for convenience, so the vast majority will pass over and simply disregard your ad if it doesn't include the necessary info - like the model number, PRICE, a picture, shipping, etc. So in other words, YOU ARE most certainly LOSING customers by not advertising the price.

Accept it. They lost me, they lost Postalblue, they lost Michael Jones, and who knows how many hundreds/thousands more just like us. They didn't lose you, but then you are very much in the minority.

In summary: Lower price necessitates the need to sell in volume. In order to sell in volume, you need to be able to ADVERTISE YOUR LOW PRICE TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE so they know your price is the lowest and buy it!

Otherwise, you defeat the whole purpose of selling it low in the first place. Unless of course you just enjoy needlessly cutting in to your own profit margins in a massochistic sort of way. And that's fine, uh, if you're in to that sort of thing.

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Agreed. I am one of a great number who will not pick up the phone unless I absolutely have to. It's just a much more productive use of time to continue looking on the net for the tons of other resellers who actually post prices.

I can think of a lot of reasons why "call for price" selling is a bad idea on the net:

1) I usually shop at night!

2) A lot of people are still on modems so they'll have to hang up the modem to use the phone.

3) "Please hold for the next available representative."

4) I for one feel safer ordering with a credit card over the net (on a secure site of course). I also feel safer in that it's *my* responsibility to make sure that I enter my address and contact information correctly.

5) The web shopping exprerience exists so that people don't have to talk to salesmen and tech support morons. Why try to phone sell to people who are online to avoid making phone calls?

6) I like "browsing". I could spend an hour over the phone asking some guy the prices on hundreds of products. That's not productive! Would you shop at a store where nothing carried a price tag, and you had to take each item up to a service counter for a price check? What if it saved you 20 bucks? Hmmm....

I understand that certain prices will indeed be too low to advertise under the terms of a contract, but these should be few and far between....blowouts. For the most part, however, I believe that these "too low to advertise" specials are left-overs from magazine days. Back then you had to call no matter what, so tempting people with a "too low to print" price might have actually worked (still would have bugged me though).

As far as "click here for latest price" email responders...I've never ever gotten a price back that was too low to advertise. I can get over 30 junk emails a day and I'm just over it.

People are lazy. They'll pay 20 bucks more to buy something online at 2AM unless they know for sure that they can save 20 bucks...and they're not going to know because they can't or won't call.

Anyhow, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I think that a lot of these small "mom & pop" online music stores would take the time to assess the computer habits of online shoppers, they'd make a lot more money. What I see is a lot of clinging to old-fashioned practices that don't apply to a medium that's up & running 24/7 with no salesmen. It's a different way of doing business that just seems awful hard for some people to grasp. Small companies like 8thstreet have it nailed, and good for them, they get my repeat business.

Anyhow, to stay on topic....yeah the 603s, I've got one too. They sound good for $70 or less. I like 8thstreet...prices can be found right on their website.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[chessrock]

It's a different way of doing business that just seems awful hard for some people to grasp.

Very well put. The thing that gets me is that it really isn't that hard to grasp. But for some people, common sense is all too often ignored in favor of whatever else they've got going on in their heads.

Sorry for getting on my soap box on this. It's just a subject that hits kinda' close to home. Most of my young career has been spent trying to teach internet companies how to effectively market and advertise their products over the web. And it can get downright frustrating when people ignore 100s of years worth of accumulated marketing knowlege and millions of dollars worth of onine behavior studies in favor of "what they believe will work."

And there are an awful lot of people collecting unemployment right now because they worked for dot-coms who thought they knew what would work.

 

[cominginsecond]

Anyhow, to stay on topic....yeah the 603s, I've got one too. They sound good for $70 or less. I like 8thstreet...prices can be found right on their website.

Actually... 8th street makes you email them for many of their prices.

1) Your profits do not go UP by having the LOWEST price. No explanation needed there.

Well if you sell a lot of product because you have the lowest price than your profits do go up. No explanation needed there.

They didn't lose you, but then you are very much in the minority.

the musicians advocate is doing great, from what i understand. I don't think I'm in the minority. You don't think you're in the minority. Neither one of us knows for sure.

In summary: Lower price necessitates the need to sell in volume. In order to sell in volume, you need to be able to ADVERTISE YOUR LOW PRICE TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE so they know your price is the lowest and buy it!

For this to be true you have to be able to prove that people are unwilling to call to get a price. You haven't, that's just your opinion. Musicians Advocate signs contracts that says they can't advertise below a certain price. Their very low prices sets them apart from other retailers in the market. Otherwise, they'd be one of 12 retailers selling the MXL 603s for $80 instead of the only retailer selling them for $60. They have sold a s#%tload of these mics. Sounds like their strategy is working to me.

 

[cominginsecond]

I'm going to be posting a poll on this issue soon, so look for it. It'll go something like this: would you be willing to call a retailer to get a price quote if you were able to save more than 10% on an item? We'll see who's in the minority then! (watch, I'll lose big time and have to eat my words. Oh well.)

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Whoa there, you're assuming that you know you can save 10% prior to calling, in which case you wouldn't have to call!

You're right that 8thstreet does do email price notifications, but I've never found it to be a problem. Seems they only do it when they're running a special on an item...and yeah they do it to get you on their email list. And really, that's not such a bad idea...most people walk away with the prices they were looking for, and they add a few suckas to their mailing list.

My problem is only with the stores where a majority of their items are not priced. In my experience a lot of, ahem, "old timers" feel like they're not in control when prices are displayed openly on the net. I've run into this attitude a number of times.

Slackmaster 2000

 

[chessrock]

"Well if you sell a lot of product because you have the lowest price than your profits do go up. No explanation needed there."
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Yea, but one small problem: no one knows that your price is actually the lowest if you don't advertise the price.

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"I'm going to be posting a poll on this issue soon, so look for it. It'll go something like this: would you be willing to call a retailer to get a price quote if you were able to save more than 10% on an item?"
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Not a very relevant poll. What I'm arguing is that without listing the price, no one knows ahead of time how much they'd be saving, unless you advertised: "Save 10% by calling in," which would be breaching your contract, I suppose.
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"For this to be true you have to be able to prove that people are unwilling to call to get a price. You haven't, that's just your opinion. "
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You're right. My opinion doesn't mean squat. And it doesn't matter anyway, because other marketing research companies like Jupiter Communications and others have already beat you to the puch. In the online adv. world, we already have enough evidence to show fairly conclusively that not listing a price is detrimental to the amount of sales for an online retailer. Findings are based on solid Marketing research -- not opinions.

I did notice a strategy that bayview uses that tends to work much better - offering the lowest price they can advertise and including a "we'll beat any other price" guarantee. That way, you won't chase away those who might otherwise be turned off by the whole "no price" thing. And those who are really interested in dickering the price down even further WILL be motivated to call -- and they'll be even happier, because they'll feel like they got a better deal than what you advertised it for.

Those will be your loyal customers. Well, not really, because price shoppers will jump ship as soon as they find someone else willing to offer something cheaper. But hey, at least you made a measly one-time sum off of them. And when you count the hourly wages and/or commission you have to pay the reps answering the phones, that starts to look even more measly.

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"Musicians Advocate signs contracts that says they can't advertise below a certain price. Their very low prices sets them apart from other retailers in the market. Otherwise, they'd be one of 12 retailers selling the MXL 603s for $80 instead of the only retailer selling them for $60. They have sold a s#%tload of these mics."
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And it's really a shame, because they could have sold a shitload more. I now see that you do have some pretty strong ties to this company, hence your intimate knowlege of their pricing, competitors, profit margins, and sales figures. So you might as well come clean. Are you the owner? Partner? Good friend? Level with us. We promise you won't get the Alan Hyatt treatment.

 

[postalblue]

Actually... 8th street makes you email them for many of their prices.

but you can just click on the 'buy it' link, and the price appears in your cart. until i found out about this, i never asked them to email me any prices.

 

[cominginsecond]

I have nothing, whatsoever to do with Musicians Advocate. I'm just impressed that they consistently have among the lowest prices. If you'd like to know who I am, my name is Jeremy Jensen and I live in boise, ID (Musician's Advocate is in Las Vegas). The info I have about Musicians Advocate is just from talking to the guy on the phone.