My radio reception was poor yesterday morning on the way to the store. I figured out later that evening that the Chevron car wash I used the night before sheared off my antenna (a $450 repair). I wondered if when they find broken car parts they understand the value of the customer they just lost. Some stores that quantify such things think of a customer as worth 5-years of their average sales. Figure I spend $50/week there for gas and a wash and that's $13,000 in sales they just lost. Ouch.
I'm guessing our game store customers spend about $300/year, on average, so that's about $1,500. We don't calculate this to put monetary values on people or to rank or judge them, but as a learning tool to understand how we invest in customers and their value to the business. For example, if you gain 10 customers from a $1000 add campaign, that's a total value of $15,000 in future sales for a $100 per person investment. That's really good. On the other hand, piss off a customer because you won't let them return a $10 game, and you've really screwed the pooch. Worse, annoy a customer and they'll tell an average of nine other people about their bad experience, according to guerrilla marketing experts. That's like that $1000 advertising campaign in reverse.
Companies that know this still make mistakes, but they go way out of their way to correct problems, even if the situation seems hopeless. If the customer never shops with you again, perhaps the free paint set you drop off will impress them enough to at least not tell their nine friends about what a jerk you are. They may even sing your praises, since everyone screws up now and then.
$300 dollars a year?
ReplyDeleteMy wife would love if I spent $300 dollars a year.
This is why some of us are just not "average" customers.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention this topic... Just yesterday I saw that a game store in downtown Berkeley decided to put up a very large and very offensive anti-war/anti-Bush display in their store front and as a result I will no longer spend my money there. I have long felt they were a little more vocal than a store should be but accepted it as being Berkeley and didn't think much of it. But it's one thing to have opinions and very much another to force me as the customer to help you voice them directly. This was the final straw for me. I spent a fair amount of moeny with them and those dollars will now ALL be used at Black Diamond Games. I'm a big board wargamer though and I know that's not your big area... Can you order issues of Strategy & Tactics? No kidding btw, I really will no longer shop at the above mentioned game store and I let them know.
ReplyDelete(sorry these keep getting posted as anon as I can't seem to login...)
I can get Strategy & Tactics. Just come in so we can talk about it. It's a special order thing that doesn't sell normally.
ReplyDeleteI've intentionally kept politics out of the store (despite the blog).
Politics do not belong in stores.
ReplyDeleteI can think of no faster way to lose customers (that is legal, that is).
Blogs are blogs. You can read them or not.
Is it just me, or do wargamers tend to be a bit more conservative (particularly about defense/military issues)?
ReplyDeleteThere are exceptions, as with most generalizations.
Fulminata might be considered a partial exception to this rule. :)
Most of my wargaming buddies lean to the left actually. I myself am socially on the left but economically and militarily on the right. Technically I'm a libertarian but since I'm kind of a hawk that puts me more towards the Republicans than not. Anyway, my personal politics don't matter and certainly those of the stores I visit shouldn't. It really irks me how in your face they were about it.
ReplyDelete"Is it just me, or do wargamers tend to be a bit more conservative..."
ReplyDeleteJust older...
I always figured gamers were just plain extreme. We all seem to have strong opinions and many times those opinions are just a little bit "out there" or at odds with society as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI find for myself, for example, that creating worlds for the last near 3 decades has changed my views on a lot of things. Many prejudices based on, well anything, just seem a bit ignorant.
But, back to topic, shoving your views down your customer's throats, especially when a good portion of those customers are not on your side of the weird spectrum, is usually a bad thing.
Even in Berserkely.
Me, I'm 34. Is that old? :(
ReplyDeleteJust keep gaming.
ReplyDeleteYou'll never grow old, you'll just eventually move along to your chosen alignment's plane.
I've also got business partners with varying political beliefs, so it wouldn't be cool to be overly political in-store.
ReplyDeleteBut if you grew your beard out and adopted the pointy hat from the Ugyen Wanchuk we wouldn't be disappointed. We could all bow to you as we enter the store :)
ReplyDeletePeople aren't wearing enough hats.
ReplyDelete"I myself am socially on the left but economically and militarily on the right."
ReplyDeleteThat describes me eight years ago. I'm still not anti-war per se, but I'm very much anti this war, and by "this war" I mean the one in Iraq and the fake one against "terror" not the one in Afghanistan. I still think that one was the right thing to do. It's a shame we never committed the resources to finish the job, instead frittering them away in Iraq.
As for joedog's comment on wargamers, I've found that they do tend to skew a bit more conservative than the public at large. There are plenty of exceptions to that trend though, and I'm one of them. Ted Racier, designer of Paths of Glory and other WWI games, is another.
These things are relative.
ReplyDeleteMost people that are considered conservative here in the bay area would be considered liberal in 90% of the country. Especially on social issues.