Chris Broshears

Few things amaze me more than my wife's ability to find a good bargain.  In fact, she doesn't just excel at finding deals.  Sometimes she creates a deal where none previously existed.

In American society, negotiation of prices is expected in certain settings only.   For example, we understand that when buying a car, the "manufacturer's suggested retail price" is truly only a suggestion.  So we show up at the dealership ready to haggle, and the dealer expects this.   It's considered normal.

Or, when buying or selling a house, your realtor will tell you to expect there to be offers and counteroffers.  It's just how it's done.

But people are shocked when I tell them how my wife has saved our family hundreds of dollars at a time by negotiating at retail stores, big-box national chains with names that you would recognize.   She gets discounts by, well, asking for them.   For example, we recently purchased a new TV.  The same model we bought showed up in the store's national ad just a few weeks later.  The advertised sale price was less than my wife paid!

How does she pull it off?  It takes a combination of timing, chutzpah, killer instinct, and charm that most people lack.  But a better question is, why is it so surprising?  It seems almost scandalous.  In fact, while it's going on, I usually find it embarrassing that she's asking for special treatment.  She'll get no complaints from me about the cash we save, but in the moment it seems so...nervy.

However, being a consumer hasn't always been like that, as Time Magazine pointed out, in it's 1999 Person of the Year tribute to Internet retailer Jeff Bezos:

The idea of fixed prices is only about 100 years old. Before then nearly everything was negotiable. The last great retail revolution was mail order, led by Sears, Roebuck in the 1890s, and it solidified the idea of fixed prices, since buyer and seller were often separated by hundreds of miles of rail track.

Over time, customers preferred the fixed price model.  Sears prospered, and other retailers followed suit, to the extent that American society  has come to accept--even expect--the idea that prices are fixed.  It's not a mandate of law, it's just become "the way things are."  This is why my wife's example is so startling, because she defies the norm.

That revolution took a century, but in the Internet age, norms change much faster.   One revolutionary idea playing out before our eyes is an expectation that individuals--and not some distant publisher or broadcaster--can determine what messages and media they want, and when they want them.

For example, I can remember when late-night viewing choices consisted of Johnny Carson, reruns on one of the other two (!) networks, or a test pattern.  Now, the options are too many to list--hundreds of cable channels, podcasts, DVR recordings, Hulu, YouTube, Netflix streaming, etc.  And those are just the video options, to say nothing of websites, blogs, social networks, satellite radio...but you get the point.

For a marketer, what are the implications of a society where people expect to view only what they want, and nothing they don't want?  For one, it simply doesn't make sense to send a generic, one-size-fits-all email "blast."  Your recipients have segmented their media consumption to include only what suits them personally.  If you're not tuning your communications to suit their needs, you risk losing their attention and becoming unwelcome in their inboxes.

This is the main reason we talk so much about segmentation (dividing your list into subgroups for targeting), dynamic content (creating different version of email for different subscribers), and collecting profile information.   It's because recipients now expect you to interest them, personally.  But don't look for them to tell you so.  It is--particularly for the younger generation--simply "the way things are."

Fail to target subscribers with relevant and dynamic content, and you'll appear out of line with the norm, just like my wife.  But unlike her, you won't save money, and you could lose some by alienating your subscribers.

Chris Broshears | Product Development