I think to sell interactive
entertainment it should be a creative experience. The trip to
Sci-Fi City exemplified a great example of displaying merchandise
to sample within the store to advertise what you can do at home.
Other examples would be Best Buy and Circuit City. However Sci-Fi
City goes as far as to have actual organizations and clubs meet
up in their store for their meetings. This is an ideal way to
have repeat customers to continually purchase from the store and
not seek outside competitors.
At the aptly named Sci-Fi City there were hundreds of toys, magazines,
comic books, posters, computer games, role-playing games and other
nerdy stuff that filled the store from wall to wall. According
to the promomagazine website there
are, “efforts to tear consumers away from the competition
- and keep them off the Internet - helped fuel a 5.1 percent increase
in spending on P-O-P advertising in 1999 to $14.4 billion, according
to estimates from promo based on industry sources.” Indeed
I’ve noticed a steady amount of consumers now choosing to
purchase goods through the internet instead of going to a store.
Many people tell me it’s just cheaper to purchase online
and get exactly what you want without going anywhere.
Personally I enjoy going to stores and playing the games the store
lets you sample. When I was younger I played on the “Toys
R Us” computer console for hours even though it reset itself
many times and asked me to get off and let someone else try. I
don’t like to purchase things online; I don’t trust
the online community just yet. There is something shady about
ordering something through a computer and buying something from
a company or person you’ve never met. Buying online to me
is like buying from those weird infomercials. In
http://www.x-entertainment.com/messages/512.html there is
a funny, but pretty accurate analysis of how stupid it is to buy
online. This type of retail-tainment is seedy. As the guy on the
site Matt says, “Is the item I plan to buy one I'd brag
about to friends, or is it more likely one they'd kick me in shin
for having spent money on?” This is a good indicator for
anyone who buys frivolously from stores whether online or in the
actual location.
The rise of retailtainment is a good thing in my opinion. It forces
to get out of their homes, interact with others and spend money.
Hopefully stores will do better because of this and we won’t
end up like hermits solely buying things.
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