Alright, so, first of all I hope I'm not breaking any rules by quoting a post from the last thread but I think there were a lot of slanderous claims made towards the Isles/Barclays sales/marketing team in the last thread based on some huge misconceptions and I think they need to be cleared up. I also want to say that its not my intention to offend isles fan or anyone else and I apologize if it comes off that way.
The OP said the seats he wanted, higher priced, were not available. Perhaps, and I do not know this, he was unwilling to look at other options in the same price range? Or perhaps, he wanted a certain seat in a certin section and those specific seats weren't available? That may not be the case but then again......My guess is if he had walked away he would have gotten a call back in short time and the more expensive seat would have suddenly appeared.
Reality is we don't know what their master plan is.
While you may question their marketing strategy it's called supply and demand.
Push people into less desierable seats now, fill those, so when people call closer to next season they can force them into the more expensive seats. As the season approches and if people are desperate to get in they'll pay anything. It's actully a good marketing startegy. Kinda like when you go to buy a new car and they try to sell you last years model. That is done to clear out the crap so when future buyers come to buy they have no choice but to buy the more expensive current year model. Simple supply and demand. it's one of the most effective marketing strategies out there.
I am not sure why you bring up the internet but the internet makes it easier to manipulate the message of what's being put out there when you consider as the owner of the site you control the content.
There's some real big misconceptions here and some pretty heavy allegations made towards the sales reps here that arise from naivety. I'm gonna try and explain this in the most basic way possible and I'm just trying to point out that it really doesn't make any sense for the sales reps to mislead anyone in the ways being alleged from a sales/marketing POV.
First and foremost it's very important to realize that "supply and demand" is in no way, shape, or form a marketing strategy. Its an economic model used to determine price in a micro economic market. The second most important thing to realize is that almost all marketing plans follow the same 4-5 step model. Those steps are Defining a measurement plan, Documenting the infrastructure, Making an implementation plan, implementing that plan, and maintaining and refining that plan. But we'll get back to that later.
It's important to recognize supply and demand as a economic model because
all major sports venues work on a completely different economic model. They work on a Fixed price incentive(sometimes known as Firm target) or just called Fixed Price model. The major difference in these two models being the supply and demand model fluctuates in real time based on, you guessed it, supply and demand while the FP(fixed price) model has its prices determined during the first stage of the marketing plan and those prices remain static until the end of the cycle. Now, in sports marketing, these cycles go by year(or season) and are usually broken up into regular and post season. The most important thing to note is that in the FP model the prices are determined in the first stage waaaaaaay before the sales team is involved in the process. The sales team isn't involved in determining the price of seats. This is why tickets cost the same amount in October as they do in all the following months. If supply and demand had any effect of the market the price of seats would constantly rise month by month as supply dwindles.
To make it as simple as possible in the FP model the price of seats is determined by analyzing the cost of the product(think overhead that goes into the seat salaries, maintenance etc.) and adding the target profit(how much they need to make per seat). There's a lot more that goes into it and the actual equations that determine prices are much more complicated but this is essentially the end result. In other words, they already know exactly how much money they need to charge per seat in order to reach the goals they set forward in step one of their marketing plan(Defining a measurement plan). In phase two(Documenting the infrastructure) they determine exactly how many seats they need to sell in order to reach their goals(whatever they are) and set goals/quotas based on those numbers.
Steps 3-4 are basically selling their product and collecting/organizing the data on what was sold and what wasn't. This step is extremely important in the FP model because all of this data determines what the prices for next year are going to be. They take the data gathered here and apply it to the next cycle(next season) and determine what their target profit is going to be. Whatever their new target profit is determines whether the price goes up or down. If they reach their goals they raise the bar and prices go up. It's kiiiiiiiinda like supply and demand but not really because supply/demand is only one of many factors that determines the target profit. The data gathered here is
extremely important. It NEEDS to remain constant so the target profit can be accurately calculated. This is why the prices don't change. Having multiple prices for the same seats makes determining the target profit extremely complicated and sometimes impossible depending on the volume of sales. Also, changing the price in the middle of the cycle(season) is going to skew the data as well because there will be multiple metrics(values) for the same dimensions(seats).
Step five is where the changes in price are made. The data collected is applied to a profit-cost curve and changes are made depending on whether or not goals are met. This is done at the end of the season. This is why we see changes in seating price from season to season and not randomly throughout the season.
All this is really important because it proves your "as people get more desperate they'll pay anything" argument doesn't hold much water. They're not going to have to "pay anything" because the prices aren't going to change until next year because if they do they risk skewing the data and missing out on a
ton of money by miscalculating their target profits. Its extremely risky to make a huge change like that in the middle of your marketing plan. Pushing people to the cheaper seats is also a terrible idea and marketing strategy because the "bad" seats typically have smaller target profits which means their less likely to reach their goals for that year again resulting in lower target profits for the next year.
Anyone with even a bit of sales/marketing experience knows what their master plan is. It's to reach their goals to increase their target profits. Pushing people to seats with smaller profit margins so they can attempt to sell the higher priced seats later doesn't make sense because the prices aren't going to change. All it does is make them risk not selling premium seats with higher profit margins in exchange for cheaper seats with lower profit margins. There's no reason to do it. It's not going to help them reach their goal on an organizational level and It's also going to hurt sales reps on a more individual level because their commissions are going to drop from selling cheaper seats.
I also brought up the internet because its another reason that negates any reason to lie to potential buyers. Why take money out of sales reps pockets and risk not meeting your quotas to hope they tell their friends seats are running out when the business itself can just go on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, create an email marketing campaign, or go on their website and post "seats are running out. get them quick"? They'll reach far more people, generate far more buzz, and not risk losing sales on premium seating with higher profit margins.
Again, I don't mean to offend anyone. I just felt that the sales team at the barclays/isles is being demonized unfairly.
I hope this cleared things up a bit. If anyone has anymore questions feel free to message me. I have a masters in marketing and years of experience. I'd be happy to elaborate more but felt that this post is already long enough haha.
