Show Them What They’ll Never See Again

Announce to your target audience an item you’re selling is a limited edition, and sales can blossom. It’s true with artwork and, it appears, with encyclopedias.
     When Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. announced the end of the print edition, the average 60 orders per week promptly grew to 1,050. What had become a marginal part of the business because of the move to digital versions of the product became a prominent profit center. Briefly.
     The publisher attributed the sales boost to nostalgia. That could very well be a motivator. Nostalgia does sell merchandise, although it usually kicks in when a product has been gone for a while and then comes back. Maybe a number of consumers who remember looking at the print edition in the past had forgotten their affection for the Encyclopedia Britannica as a crib sheet when writing term papers. Maybe they’d forgotten the print edition still existed. Suddenly, with the discontinuation announcement, the memories flowed back and people decided to make a buy.
     In my opinion, a more likely motivation for shoppers was the last chance to see. “Last Chance to See” was the title of a popular BBC documentary series and a book. Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine told listeners and readers about their travels to see the mountain gorilla and northern white rhino in Zaire, the Amazonian manatee in Brazil, and the kakapo in New Zealand. Animals in danger of becoming extinct.
     For you to turn “last chance to see” into a successful selling technique, the item or experience must be attractive to shoppers even when not on the brink of extinction. In addition, as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. and the BBC did, you need to remind people it’s the end of the road.
     Researchers at UCLA and University of California-San Diego applied this to tourism. A survey of people who’d moved away from the Windy City found that visits to tourist attractions, such as Chicago’s Millennium Park, were clustered toward the very end of residency, perhaps in the midst of packing up. Other surveys had found that tourists visiting a city for three weeks saw more of the major attractions than residents of three or more years.
     The UCLA/UCSD researchers suggest tourism retailers sell to locals the idea of a “staycation,” such as a gift certificate for specific dates to visit the nearby attractions. The marketing hook is “Now’s the time to see.”

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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