Christmas…is it about price or experience?

Five weeks before Christmas I did some consultancy in one of my local shopping centres. Walking around one had to question what was the driver to get people to spend at this time of year. One company I looked at had a 40% off Christmas sale…in my youth sales occurred after Christmas…price was not the driver during the Christmas period.

Does this mean times have changed ?

In the same shopping centre I came across a small company painting Christmas baubles and displaying them with flair, here price was not the driver.

Then I discovered the Nutella promotion. In Australia Nutella is a commodity product that is often on the grocery list.

But, Nutella were offering the product as a gift with the receiver name as the label. Price was not the driver, the experience was the driver and the sale representative told me it was huge success.

The message that came across to me was create an experience and price becomes less important, alas, a number or retailers have yet to discover this hidden secret.