Dutch Auction!

[SFJoe]

A friend forwarded me an email from a retailer that is selling a bunch of wine in a Dutch auction--you know the drill, it's how they do flowers in Amsterdam and so on--they cut the price periodically until you buy or until the candle goes out.

Anyhow, a couple of minutes on winesearcher shows miraculously that the 30% price cut in the first day for my items of interest almost brings the wines into line with what you can get in an unfrenzied, ordinary way from various retailers around the country, all of whom ship.

Do you suppose the store's credibility suffers with its frequent customers when it does lame and pathetic stuff like this, or do they not have credibility to start with, or are their frequent customers lame and pathetic dupes?

 

[Jeff Grossman]

Are we allowed to choose more than one?

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

The Crush guys are nice, but their prices are high most of the time. Kind of like Zachy's.

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by SFJoe:

Do you suppose the store's credibility suffers with its frequent customers when it does lame and pathetic stuff like this, or do they not have credibility to start with, or are their frequent customers lame and pathetic dupes?

I wonder if some of the attraction of auctions, and a source of their popularity, isn't the competitive aspect of them and the thrill of "winning" the auction. To that extent, one could argue that it's much about entertainment as commerce, so perhaps a surcharge can be justified. Having said that, I'll stay at arms' length, thank you. To a certain extent, I view it with the same suspicion that I do Wine Spies and Woot Wine.

Mark Lipton

 

[Salil Benegal]

Don't see anything wrong with that as a way of moving inventory that's just hanging around on the shelves. But then again I may just be gullible, particularly as I bit on a bottle of Knoll Riesling in that sale (and buy from Crush quite often - find they've got the most interesting selection of German and Austrian Riesling/GV for my tastes out of all the places I shop at).

Cheers,

Salil

 

[Ned Hoey]

Why not price wines so they sell to begin with?

Something about this makes me feel that they consider their customers marks to be gamed into buying overpriced wine. Am I just being insecure and paranoid?

 

[Cory Cartwright]

Yes.

It's a marketing scheme, sure, but if you haven't noticed, there is a rather severe recession in effect and they probably need some quick cash on hand, and getting rid of stuff quickly that was probably priced pre-recession is a good bet.

 

[Ned Hoey]

Facetiousness, I'm still not good at getting it across in posts...

I understand completely what is going on here, but if they purely, simply need to clear out inventory,
and not play games with customers, why not just do a straight 40% off sale?

 

[Cory Cartwright]

Because that doesn't quite get the publicity that a stunt like this does.

 

[Ned Hoey]

I guess... but I would be more interested by a straight sale than this. Now, I'm cynically making comments
about the stunt and not perusing their site. It's impossible to know, but I wonder which approach would have delivered the best results?

 

[Cory Cartwright]

Crush has perhaps the worst front page for a commerce site that I have ever seen. Everytime I hear about something I may want to buy I can't ever figure what the hell is going on and I immediately leave.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Cory Cartwright:
Crush has perhaps the worst front page for a commerce site that I have ever seen. Everytime I hear about something I may want to buy I can't ever figure what the hell is going on and I immediately leave.

First thing in the first column is "Search", followed immediately by "Advanced Search" and "Browse Our Selection". What else do you need?