I went to Future Shop today to buy a battery for my camcorder.
I don’t, as a rule, like big, boxy “super-stores”. I bought the camcorder itself from Steve’s TV, which is a more traditional, little, boxy store. But I needed a battery quickly, and Future Shop was right there on the horizon, so I dropped in.
First of all, the place is infested with well-dressed salesmen. They’re all over the place, watching you, waiting to pounce. You have to be very careful with your body language in a Future Shop. One dropped elbow or inquisitive glance, and you are immediately surrounded by these polished, buff, slick, oiled robots.
I found the camcorder section at the back, in front of a wall of television sets. One of the robots came over and tried to help. The batteries were locked in this rack. He didn’t have a key. Why not? I don’t know. Where I work, we tend to trust people with keys. If we didn’t, we would never get anything done, because everybody would spend most of their times running around getting keys from the people who are supposed to make sure you don’t do anything stupid with them.
Mr. Robot went to another salesman. He didn’t have the key. Another salesman came up: the manager has the key. Where’s the manager? We don’t know. We stood there waiting for five minutes making small talk with a robot while the other salesmen ran around looking for the manager. Finally, they found him. A key was brought. They opened the rack and we bought a camcorder battery. This is a “lithium ion” battery, which is supposed to last for four hours. It cost $89.99. It takes four salesmen to release the battery from it’s guarded position on the display rack.
There is a desk and a computer near the camcorders and the salesman took my VISA card and charged my account and then printed a receipt. Then he escorted us to the door.
Now if I owned a store and customer came in, I would think that the last thing you want to do is clear him out of the building to prevent him from doing any further shopping. But that’s what this salesman did. He took my battery, and some blank video tapes I had purchased with it, and escorted us right to the check-out counter. At this point, the cashier touched the items with a magic wand so we could escape through the detectors and leave the store.
I had wanted to check out the CD section– about time I got a digital remaster of Springsteen’s “Born to Run”. And I wanted to check out their prices on CD players. And I’m always on the lookout for interesting software or computer accessories. Not today though. One purchase, and out you go!
I’d like to talk to the idiot who devised this strategy. I’d like to know his reasoning. I don’t like Future Shop, but I’m curious about a marketing strategy that consists of reducing the possibility of customers making multiple purchases. Is it to prevent shop-lifting? Is it to keep people from switching price stickers around? Don’t they have enough robot-salesmen in the store to prevent such things from happening?
At Steve’s TV, I bought the camcorder from a salesman. He took me to a counter where a pretty girl rang it up on the computer and then gave me a receipt. I walked out of the store un-noticed. But I’ll be back.
For the record, by the way, on the items I purchased, the prices at Steve’s TV were either cheaper or the same.