There's a post at the Re-imagineering blog aching with sadness at the way the Disney theme parks herd you into a shop at every possible opportunity. This is, apparently, exactly contrary to what Walt himself wanted when he built the parks. Sure he was happy to sell you stuff, but he didn't want to dislocate the theme (the point of a theme park, after all) so the stores were discrete and appropriate. Theme came first, retail second.
This reminded me of a disturbing recent trend in UK retaillers - the annoying upsell. You get to the counter of a WH Smith and the poor assistant has to say - 'since you're buying a magazine you can also buy this bar of chocolate at half-price'. (I've yet to discover a product that doesn't qualify you for an enormous bar of chocolate at half-price.) They do the same thing at HMV with half-price DVDs. I'm sure some clever management consultants have demonstrated that this yields significant ROI from the odd person that says yes. But what the model presumably doesn't reveal is that it really irritates the hell out of the rest of us. It slows the transaction down a bit, which I guess isn't the worst thing, but it just sends this horrible 'we're always selling' signal to the customer, at the point where you thought you'd already made all your decisions. They may as well just wave a big sign saying 'to us - you're just one big wallet'.
Doesn't anyone in these companies remember the old Goldman Sachs thing about long-term greedy versus short-term greedy? It's Goldman Sachs after all, not Naomi Klein, but even they recognise the value of short-term sacrifice bringing longer-term gain. ie leave your customers alone sometimes, so they'll like you a bit and come back.
Hi Russell, I am trying to contact you from a magazine in London about reprinting your photos of each channel in the Grand Hyatt in Jordan. Can you email me urgently... i can't find an email address for you on your site. Hope this works!
Regards,
Warren
Posted by: Warren Jackson | June 21, 2006 at 10:00 PM
It's really a shame what's happening to Disneyland. Walt's main goal in creating the theme park was to make visitors feel as though they were entering into a magical fantasy world totally disconnected form our social reality. Almost like stepping into someone's vast, numinous imagination. "Hard sells" and blatant greed quickly remove you from the "experience," which I foresee precipitating into the fall of Disney.
Posted by: Oliver | June 22, 2006 at 12:20 AM
Thats definitely true. Although its nice to have more offers, it does get a little irritating.
Though a good one I saw at a Burger King was a badge on the assistant that said "If I dont offer you Onion Rings you get them for free"
Posted by: Rob Mortimer | June 22, 2006 at 12:57 AM
Oh, I can't begin to describe how much I dislike the WHSmith upsell. It causes me to get flustered at the checkout because, as you point out, I thought I'd made all my decisions - having already wrestled with my conscience about whether I really need/want/deserve that small treat.
There's no way you can walk away happy with your purchase. Either you're a fool to have passed up a great offer (the sales assistants often like to point this out), or you're burdened with an obscene amount of something you know is bad for you and a feeling that you have been manipulated.
Posted by: Helen | June 22, 2006 at 08:51 AM
Models never do measure the fact that people get irritated by stuff. If they did measure the forgotten 99% who don't respond etc, then we wouldn't have junk mail, crap TV ads, urban spam etc.
We found some great quotes from call centre people on this
http://simonandrews.typepad.com/big_picture/2006/01/the_forgotten_9.html
Posted by: Simon Andrews | June 22, 2006 at 12:11 PM