Last week, even before we had celebrated Halloween, I noticed that Christmas had arrived in the land of retail: Holiday-themed lattes at Starbucks, festive paper plates at Loblaw’s, and plenty of décor at the Bay.
Look, I enjoy the merriment of the holiday season as much as the next girl. But this habit of ‘holiday creep,’ where retailers move dates up on the calendar in order to drive sales really irks me. (Is there anything more depressing than seeing ‘Back-to-School’ sales in early July??)
In yet another example of the power of social media, last week customers to took their computers to complain about the early arrival of Christmas. The culprit was Canadian company Shopper’s Drug Mart, where the Christmas music began to play the day after Halloween. Customers went ballistic. By and large, people were happy to listen to Christmas music, just not so dang early in the season. And they let Shopper’s know about it.
Shopper’s Drug Mart addressed the issue on
Facebook with the message above.
The combination of quick response, and the fact that Shopper’s Drug Mart used Facebook to deliver its message is a strategic win for Shopper’s. As of now, almost 6,000 people have commented on the post, most of whom support the move by Shopper’s. An additional 7,500 people ‘like’ the decision.
As we like to say, it’s not what goes wrong in your business, it’s how you fix it. Isn’t it neat that Shopper’s took to social media address its problem? And even better, they actually listened to what their customers had to say.
Printer-friendly version