Ordinary Nothing

The trade-in idea isn’t new. Various sellers in various industries offer customers a discount if they bring in an older product similar to the one they’re buying.
You see many trade-in offers for cars, for televisions, lots of home electronics equipment, phones, refrigerators, and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, there are some things that you would normally not see offered as part of a trade-in deal. Like this tantalizing offer that I saw in the newspaper today…
A trade-in discount for… toothbrushes. Yes, you read that right. Bring in your old used toothbrush, and get a discount when buying a new one.

I mean… who would go to a store carrying a used toothbrush, for crying out loud ?! The discount price is small, the price for a brand new top of the line toothbrush is small. Would this really overcome the gross factor ? Would it overcome the reaction of other potential customers that would get out of the store when they see people brandishing their used toothbrushes about ?

Personally, I may buy another competing brand of toothbrush just to avoid being asked if I carried the old one with me…

And from a different point of view, this also doesn’t make much economic sense. Trade-ins are done as a sort of partial price discrimination. Trying to attract the customers who won’t pay full price because they have a similar product, but who may be willing to pay less to get a sort of an upgrade. Well, newsflash:

1. Everybody has a toothbrush. Everybody.
2. The features of a new product are meaningless in the toothbrush industry. People replace a toothbrush when it needs to be replaced. They will replace it in the same time, regardless of price variations of the new product or the available features.

So this trade in does not make their toothbrushes appealing (although maybe appalling) to more people. It does not attract extra customers beyond those that would by them anyway.

The only idea is to try and shift some people who already buy a toothbrush from the competitors to them. I admit that it is a valid economic purpose, but is this really the way? Somehow, I don’t quite see that.

If anyone wonders, the offer is for new Colgate toothbrushes. So if you happen to be in Israel, have your old toothbrush with you, and want to get a shiny, new, dirt-cheap Colgate toothbrush, now’s the time.
Me, I’ll buy Oral-B next time…

February 3rd, 2005 at 13:32 EET | Categories: Marketing | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.