Manufacturers, in order to generate more sales, tolerate retail
manipulation by stores. Retail manipulation commonly focuses on how sell
a specific product beyond the needs of a consumer. The responsibility
to sell products is now being transferred to the retailing store.
The actual interaction between buyer and seller takes
place in a retail store, that’s why there will be more focus on
manipulation in retailing outlets. Some stores have a tricky floor
layout to manipulate the buying behavior of consumers. There are also
some tricky sales talks that will make you happily buy a certain product
even if it is beyond of your needs.
One of the most popular
retailing stores is BestBuy, which employ retail manipulation to sell
their products. They admitted that they kept up a fake web site to trick
customers. The trick here, is if a potential customer checked the
BestBuy website and found an item with a pretty attractive price then
went to the store to ask for it, the store’s salesperson will checkout a
fake website inside the store and will show to the customer that the
price has already gone up.
Retail manipulation also includes
deceptive price tags. For example, for Apple’s famous iPhone, you will
notice that on their website the price of their latest iPhone starts
from $99 only. Pretty cheap right? But as you go further in your
shopping you will notice that the iPhone that is being sold by $99 must
be attached with 2 year AT & T locked-in subscription plan. The bad
thing here is, you can’t get an iPhone with other mobile services aside
from AT & T unless you unlocked it.
Another
example is in appliance store, you’ll be approached by a salesperson
that is promoting HD televisions. They will feed your mind with the idea
that you will have an extreme viewing experience using HD televisions.
But in order to achieve the best movie experience with your HD
television, the salesperson will recommend that you buy a blue-ray disc
player also. High Definitionviewing capability doesn’t reside within the
television itself but its compatibility with HD movie players or HD
cable services.
Unlike any other kind of manipulation, retail
manipulation is more powerful because this is where the actual consumers
are willing to spend their money to satisfy their needs or or obtain
their pleasures. Most of us might already notice these methods being
employed, but we still participate in these kind unfair systems.