MediaMarkt to lose 50% of customers after failed opening, Onegin claims
‘Once the opening ceremony of MediaMarkt consumer electronics chain store has failed so spectacularly after an aggressive advertising campaign and with the opening time scheduled for midnight, the brand owners are bound to sustain considerable reputation losses,’ Project Manager of Onegin Advertising Group Alyona Andropova said to UrBC.
The night-time opening ceremony of MediaMarkt failed in Alatyr Shopping Center in Yekaterinburg. Despite all the claims made by the opening coordinators, the store never started working at 12 AM on December 10, 2009. TEN-Development Management Company has already declared they alone were fully responsible for what had happened. The company’s head Sergey Trofimov explained to UrBC reporters that they decided to back out of the night-time, large-scale opening ceremony upon the recommendation of the city authorities.
‘One way or another, most customers choose a company to shop with on the basis of advertisements. They look at the special offers and consider the possible benefits. If people actually showed up at the opening ceremony in the middle of the night (and despite the awfully cold weather), their motivation must have been rather serious. And after the store had simply failed to open and people were given no explanations, about 50% of the store’s potential customers will never come back again,’ Andropova maintains.
‘To minimize the reputation loss, the opening coordinators should have warned the people in advance. This is easy nowadays thanks to the radio, television, and of, course, the Internet. They could have contacted any advertising or information agency, and in an hour half of Yekaterinburg dwellers would have heard the news. It’s obvious, after all, that only some young people like students who use the Internet often could have come to the store at night. If measures had been taken, they wouldn’t have had to be freezing next to the entrance wondering why the doors were closed,’ the expert adds.
‘MediaMarkt will now have to spend a lot of money and efforts on improving its brand image. They will probably have to promise their customers even more discounts and try to turn the whole incident into a joke. It is difficult, however, to see something like this as a joke,’ Ms Andropova notes.
The night-time opening ceremony of MediaMarkt failed in Alatyr Shopping Center in Yekaterinburg. Despite all the claims made by the opening coordinators, the store never started working at 12 AM on December 10, 2009. TEN-Development Management Company has already declared they alone were fully responsible for what had happened. The company’s head Sergey Trofimov explained to UrBC reporters that they decided to back out of the night-time, large-scale opening ceremony upon the recommendation of the city authorities.
‘One way or another, most customers choose a company to shop with on the basis of advertisements. They look at the special offers and consider the possible benefits. If people actually showed up at the opening ceremony in the middle of the night (and despite the awfully cold weather), their motivation must have been rather serious. And after the store had simply failed to open and people were given no explanations, about 50% of the store’s potential customers will never come back again,’ Andropova maintains.
‘To minimize the reputation loss, the opening coordinators should have warned the people in advance. This is easy nowadays thanks to the radio, television, and of, course, the Internet. They could have contacted any advertising or information agency, and in an hour half of Yekaterinburg dwellers would have heard the news. It’s obvious, after all, that only some young people like students who use the Internet often could have come to the store at night. If measures had been taken, they wouldn’t have had to be freezing next to the entrance wondering why the doors were closed,’ the expert adds.
‘MediaMarkt will now have to spend a lot of money and efforts on improving its brand image. They will probably have to promise their customers even more discounts and try to turn the whole incident into a joke. It is difficult, however, to see something like this as a joke,’ Ms Andropova notes.
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