How Can We Avoid a Repeat of Black Friday Tragedy
by Terry Hemeyer
December 05, 2008
Pierpont helps many of our clients with consumer and marketing issues. Pierpont executive counsel Terry Hemeyer discusses recent Wal-Mart marketing tactics and the resulting disaster.
DAVID ELLISON'S CONSUMER WATCH
How can we avoid a repeat of Black Friday tragedy?
By DAVID ELLISON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 5, 2008, 10:47PM
This is the season to shop till you drop. But that doesn't mean you have to become the victim of a frenzied mob like the one that trampled to death a Wal-Mart employee in Valley Stream, N.Y., on Black Friday.
The National Retail Federation said it had never heard of a worker being killed on Black Friday. However, all of us, if not from personal experience, are aware that things can get a little hectic when you have a throng of shoppers at one time vying for a few sale items.
Consumer Watch sought some expert advice to avoid such incidents. And, to no great surprise, one blamed the retailers and the other pointed a finger at shoppers.
First, the short version from Terry Hemeyer, who teaches crisis management at Rice University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management:"I think the advice to the consumer, in my view, is that you are falling on deaf ears because they are not going to pay attention. They are going to pay attention to what the sale is - is it something they need and how they are going to get it."
Hemeyer, who also teaches marketing, public relations and advertising at the University of Texas at Austin, places the onus on retailers to prevent such accidents. He said that throughout history, consumers have been attacking each other to get sale items that are in short supply, even when people are lined up waiting for the doors to open.
Hemeyer, who made a point not to attack Wal-Mart, said if store managers don't understand the "herd mentality," then they are not doing their jobs. "In other words," he said, "if you do something that the doors open at 8 and that's when the sales start and it's a limited supply, I think that's a formula for a problem because everybody has to be there at the same time."
He suggests that retailers take the approach of mailing discount coupons that are not limited to certain products on sale at a specific time.
"It's just a matter of, will you get there before they are gone," he said.