(no subject)

[calzephyr]

At work we often talk about advertising being "high IQ" or "low IQ". Low IQ media would be anything that is cheap, cheesy, lacking in qualitative measures or misses the audience completely. For example, most people today would find vintage cigarette advertising to be very low IQ because consumers are far more used to advertising and more savvy about the messages that can persuade them.

Anyhow, the point of the pre-ramble is that my His Dark Materials omnibus arrived in the mail from Chapters-Indigo and it contained a mystery gift card. The only reason I ordered from Chapters-Indigo was that I wanted a Webkinz stuffed animal and I needed something extra to get the free shipping, and I wanted the book anyway (Amazon.ca has it $2 cheaper, but they don't sell Webkinz :-))

The mystery gift card entices the recipient with the possibility of winning $1000 in merchandise, but to find out if you're a winner you have to spend $50 in-store before you can redeem the card. It's not hard to spend $50 on books, especially when the Canadian price on a book is often $5-10 more than the American price. But it is hard to get to the nearest brick and mortar store because we don't live near one. Chapters-Indigo stores tend to be for the burbs, just not ours :-)

As much as I love coupons, I'm mildly affronted to receive this offer because it's so low IQ to appeal to a greedy nature. And this is a wired world where I can find the best deal on anything with my fingertips, and a real world where the local independent bookstore is charging the US price for books, so this isn't the best customer reward they could offer. The minimum prize is $5 and it seems more and more coupons are making the consumer work harder under the guise of saving a few bucks. Why can't they just send me a $5 coupon that's good any time, real world or online?

Comments

[taeha.livejournal.com]

I've gottena couple of those mystery gift cards, I threw them away. In-store, Chapter's prices suck. As much as I would like to support a Canadian bookstore, buying them online is sooo much cheaper that I just can't do it.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention that even iRewards is teh suck - it noted at checkout that I would have saved a dollar, not big savings either. I would love to support them too, but now that Pages (and Another Dimension) are charging US prices, I can't resist either. I'm really surprised that Chapters-Indigo is still around after all these years. Either the mark up on books is huge or they run tight margins.

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

It can be very hard to evaluate how good of a "deal" something is. Coupons and sales can be tempting, but one has to evaluate whether one would buy that product if it wasn't on sale, or shop at that store if they weren't offering some kind of discount, and think about why one normally wouldn't buy that or shop there.

For example:
The breakfast cereal I usually buy, Malt-o-Meal, is a discount/generic brand that sells its own versions of name-brand cereals in cheaper bulk packaging (plastic bags with zip closures). I buy it because it's cheaper and because the zip bags stay fresher than cereal in boxes. They often put coupons in the packages, but the coupons are for the flavors that I don't usually buy because they're the super-sugary ones (I usually get shredded wheat or psuedo-cheerios or crisped rice). If I feel like splurging on a sugary cereal, I'll usually use one of those coupons and get the malt-o-meal version instead of the name-brand version, but I don't get the sugar cereals *just* because I have a coupon.

The grocery store I usually shop at has this custom-coupon printer that prints out coupons along with the receipt based on what I've just purchased. Sometimes it's for exactly what I just purchased (same product, same brand, same flavor and size) and that's especially cool. But mostly it is for a different product from the same brand, or a similar product made by a competing company, or a related product (for example, cake mix if I buy cake frosting). I usually just throw these out if they're not for something I'd normally buy but there are rare occasions where I've tried something new.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

It really is hard to evaluate these things, particularly when products are downsized while the cost goes up or remains the same. There is a chain drug store here that often had bright yellow cards on certain products which make it seem like they are on sale, but really it's the same old price. I have a base understanding of how successful advertising works, and it's kind of sad how consumers are analyzed and preyed upon. We're so weak and easily persuaded sometimes.

Custom coupons sound awesome. We don't really have that here, although Superstore will generate a discount coupon for next time and Safeway has their club card.

I wonder now if there's a website that can tell you what brand name foods are also generic versions.

BTW, I just got a notice that I book I put on hold, Con$umed, came in and I can't wait to pick it up.