Beware of killer offers not only in Saudi Arabia!! All Middle East Countries..

I would like to share with your brothers and sisters about the marketing strategies of Malls, Hyper SuperMarket-Groceries in Saudiarbia and buying habits of people who is attracted by the advertisements and lose their valuable money.

The advertisement leaflets and beautiful brochures are distributed periodically. Usually available in the reception of each building in communities. There will be dashing  brochures from malls, supermarkets-groceries, depicted with pictures of items.(mostly the items would be soon expiring, inferior qualities, or going to be outdated electronics, or older models) Price strategies from 0.99SAR (not 1 SAR), 250 SAR old price - 169 SAR new price and other well known tricks.

Once we get pamphlets we browse(repeatedly minimum 4 or 5 times) for offers and found one or two items which are not really necessary for us, but we make up our mind to so many usage options (like going vacation in the coming month or let’s use it in this or that way, the offer would be no more, so let’s grab it soon) and make the decision to go and purchase. Then,once we go there the offer will be out of stock, or the offer is misleading or if it is the right offer as we saw in an advertisement. Then we not only purchase the offer items, we go for other items also. So we spend more money on unnecessary items. And we lose our money.

Actually the offers are useful when we have been thinking about purchasing the item sometimes before which is really necessary. When the offer matches our real necessity,then it’s useful to offer. Otherwise its killer offer which makes us  lose our money on unnecessary purchases.

Let's not trap in the advertisement tricks of Merchandisers of malls and supermarkets - groceries.

Another thing is that we are cheated by the price strategies like 9 SAR(instead of 10 SAR), 19.90 Rial(instead of 20 Rial. 99 SAR instead of (100 SAR), 799 rials instead of 800 riyals.These are all psychological manipulation of our mind to think the single digit or the first digit number in the price, i.e. 799 is actually 800 rial, but its illusions like 700 rial. People are convincing themselves to jump in to purchase the items for 700 rial not realizing it’s actually 800 rial.

The real ethics of business is not to manipulate the people's mind to purchase unnecessary items by tricky advertisements, but the businesses here it has to offer real value for the necessities of the consumers. The businesses have competitions have to compete in providing great value for money to the consumers, not to manipulate them through sales and marketing strategies. People will get aware of these tricks and they will stop going to the particular malls or supermarkets.

Lets wish for genuine necessary things to buy and lets not lose our money by the manipulative marketing and sales and offers(which are 99% cheating).

Pass this to others if its found valuable.

Written by : M.Ajmal Khan.