Again, just to preface, I love Apple products. Just annoyed with the Apple Store.
The Apple website has been bombarding me with information about the new wireless Mighty Mouse - finally a bluetooth enabled mouse for my mac that has right and left clicking ability, a scroll wheel and other cool stuff. Had to have it.
Although I had vowed not to shop at the Apple store again, I found myself justifying a trip. After all, this time I was going for an Apple product - not a third party vendor's product. So I hopped in the car and went over there. As I approached the store I was greeted by a huge sign with a picture of the Mighty Mouse and the tagline "it's here!". Unfortunately, as I found out once I actually entered the store, it wasn't really there.
Oh, it had been there at some point. But now they were out of stock and had no idea when they would be getting more.
Out of stocks were one of my biggest nightmares when I was working in Innovation for Campbell's soup. Take, for instance, the launch of Soup at Hand (handheld soup you sip right from the cup). I knew this was going to be a huge immediate success at the shelf. It was on trend and nailed a powerful consumer insight. It was also going to be backed by a very substantial advertising and promotion plan. I had no doubt that Soup at Hand would fly off the shelfs. Unfortunately, every marketer for Campbell soup who had ever launched a new product had told the same story to the sales force and the plant.
Much like the boy who cried wolf, when sales and plant folks get burned one too many times by marketers they enter into the "subtract 40%" mode. This is where they nod their heads as you tell them your forecasts and they then build customer plans for 40% less. When a product is truly over-hyped, this works well for them as they actually meet their plans. However, when a product actually does live up to the hype, as did Soup at Hand, the result is massive out-of-stocks. This is when you show up at the shelf and it's empty except for a product tag telling you what was once there but isn't now. It happens when store level or manufacturing forecasts are too low for actual demand and it's hard to correct in the short term.
Out-of-stocks can kill (or at least wound) a new product launch. Most CPG new product goals are based on a combination of trial and repeat. The idea is to build the trial as quickly as possible so that you can get to the more profitable repeat purchases early in the launch year. The worst case scenario is spending a ton of advertising dollars upfront to build trial, only to send the consumer to empty shelfs. This is bad, because consumers may only shop your aisle once or twice a month. Lose them once and, at best, you may get them in a couple of weeks. At worst you may lose them forever as they choose some other product and forget about you altogether.
As bad as they are, there are lots of reasons for OOS in the world of CPG and grocery stores. Not only do you have consumers to worry about, but you've also got the customers (i.e., the grocery stores) who get just as peeved carrying too much inventory as they do when they have OOS.
But the Apple store? Out of stock on a brand new, much hyped Apple product? What's the excuse there? And even if there is a reason to have an out of stock situation, why not get a shipment out overnight?
As I related this story to a neighbor and fellow Mac user, he informed me that he doesn't even use an Apple mouse. He's been using a third party mouse that has offered all the great features of the Mighty Mouse for a long time now. And there is the problem with out-of-stocks. You give a consumer a chance to make a different decision, and very often he will.
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