Monday, March 22, 2010

In my inbox today
a notification of a 2 hour sale at Neiman Marcus.

I am just curious
Does a flash sale (2 hour, 2 day, whatever) tend to make you more likely to make a purchase?

I view these sales by Neimans as manufactured scarcity making you assume that you will have no other time to purchase this item at this price. This isn't Haute Look where they are selling the last of the stock, this is a sale with current merchandise.
Since I'm not an impulse shopper these sales don't appeal to me, but obviously they must appeal to many others or we wouldn't see so many of these flash sale sites out there.

My daughter loves Haute Look, and I'm wondering if these flash sale sites are training a new generation of shoppers to indulge in instant gratification rather than making thoughtful decisions about how they choose to spend their money.

What do you think?

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