Unusual is ok as long as it is an Offer

While in Chengdu for the recent National Day holidays I thought of checking out the departmental near my hotel. I had not walked for more than two minutes inside the electronics section of the store, when I reached an island display announcing a Bag of Rice or a Bottle of Cooking oil as a free gift with every purchase worth more than RMB 500. This was in the middle of names like Nikon, JVC, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, Apple etc.
A very pragmatic promotional offer I should say. Despite the fact that the department store was not necessarily a value destination – the promotions were very down to earth



This unique offer reminded me of something that I witnessed almost six months back while I was in a similar departmental store in a smaller town close to Kaifeng in Northern China. There I was greeted by something even more unusual – I saw a colorful starburst announcing Tide Detergent Powder being given out free with second hand DVD Players.



If I were to speculate a few inferences from these two separate observations, I would say that just like the Indian shopper – the Chinese shopper loves offers. As long as there is a promotional freebie attached to a product being sold – no matter how unrelated it might be to the product– the shopper will pay attention. This also reminds me of what my ex-colleague and good friend - R Narayanan once told me about China- “China can be a market for the most unusual of products.” I would now add by saying – “China can be a market for the most unusual promotional offers.”

This also makes me think about looking at promotional offers through a wider lens. Instead of getting stuck in the more conventional- brand or category related paradigms, we can actually open ourselves to ideas that are pragmatic or simply unusual.