Thread: thursday sales

i was wandering who decides what items are going on sale each week, is it a group poll at their studio, a different person each week or maby theres a set person that does it? and also is there any timetable/system for it? all i noticed is that thesame sales happan every month/few month, quest pack(s) sales for example are on roughly every 3 months..so any ideas?

If they are like most consumer product driven companies, sales are determined by metrics showing top- and bottom-sellers and then everything in between. These metrics are then generally used to determine a strategy at drawing interest to the low-sellers, which usually ends up being a sale. In physical goods, the idea is that a volume increase in sales at a lower price is better than tiny sales of normal price, or to move dated goods to make room for new goods; in digital goods, it is generally a way to bring light to underused items or just to move 'product'.

Since there are no shelf-space worries with digital good sales, there is little need to push product to make room, however sales are an outstanding way to move product by grabbing attention, and more-so when the sale appears on coveted items.

Originally Posted by DarkCntry

Since there are no shelf-space worries with digital good sales, there is little need to push product to make room, however sales are an outstanding way to move product by grabbing attention, and more-so when the sale appears on coveted items.

I agree. It also very useful to generate demand for consumable items. Turbine heavily uses:

1) The Free Sample product as another mechanism to get us using and addicted to temporary items like experience point boosts.

2) Quests to give us a samples.

It is a very common technique in regular brick and mortar stores. Even grocery stores that are almost all consumable products make use of these three sales methods. Turbine is immune to one of the biggest Brick and Mortar store problems. Turbine has a monopoly - you can't go somewhere else to buy your stuff.

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

Turbine is immune to one of the biggest Brick and Mortar store problems. Turbine has a monopoly - you can't go somewhere else to buy your stuff.

They also benefit (unlike brick and mortar stores) by the fact that their inventory will never 'go bad' and there is an endless and instant supply without physical storage space.

Originally Posted by Dotlbeme

They also benefit (unlike brick and mortar stores) by the fact that their inventory will never 'go bad' and there is an endless and instant supply without physical storage space.

The certainly an advantage over Brick and Mortars. Turbine is not the only company with this benefit. I do not think Digital River or Steam has any physical inventory or ships anything to customers. There a number of these companies that deal with virtual goods.

That’s the way I think this works:

They have financial reports that show which items brought the least revenue. They take those items and calculate how much money they can potentially gain if they decrease the price to specific value. If the final number of gained profit is higher than the revenue that items brought while at full cost they go for sale. It’s just a simple formula, I bet they have all kind of additional reports. But it’s pretty much all business with a big dollar sitting in head of the table of discussion.