In the following, this presentation will introduce the marketing mix situation of EB Games through an extended 7P marketing mix model, referring to the EB Games’ product, price, place, promotion, physical evidence, people, and processes.
EB Games serves a range of products including computers and video games through both online platforms and physical stores. The majority of EB Games’ products are produced and exported by third party companies. In order to gain a competitive edge, EB Games focuses primarily on customer based assets, especially brand reputation and close customer relationships. With the intention to appeal customers, EB Games launched the “Trade and Save” program encouraging customers to trade in their old products for credits towards purchasing new products.
EB Games demonstrates “price skimming’ strategy in pricing, as they launch new products at a high price and extract the maximum surplus from high valuation consumers, and gradually decrease the price to appeal price sensitive consumers. In addition, EB Games also utilizes the ‘bundle’ pricing strategy, allowing the consumer to bundle certain products together and purchase at a perceivably lower price.
As a multinational retailer, EB Games has both traditional brick-and-mortar stores and online stores. Notably, both EB Games and its parent company, GameStop, do not involved in the production or manufacturing of games and consoles, and their distribution channels flow through third party suppliers. However, EB Games manages to make profits through capitalize from this business model as all marketing related costs have already been covered by third party producers.
To connect effectively with both their current and potential consumers, EB Games has to utilize appropriate forums of communication, including advertising, public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, and selling. EB Games focuses their promotional efforts on improving customer relationships through both physical and online channels. For instance, EB Games holds a series of “Sales Events” to impress consumers with lower price. Additionally, through the EB Games’ Edge Rewards program, the company offers rewards holders with different levels of coupons and discounts. At present, EB Games is yet to adopt an “integrated marketing communications’ approach which would ensure consistency between message delivery and consumers reachability.
EB Games attaches great importance to the store design and decoration. New and pre-owned games are displayed on large walls to provide boutique style shopping experience for consumers, and stores are decorated with red sales signage to motivate customers to purchase. Furthermore, EB Games’ stores provide video game trail service in video game sampling areas.
Regarding the significant role of sales staffs, EB Games finds it is vital to implement regular and thorough training programs for EB staffs, aiming at cultivating employees that are not only familiar with EB products and have an enthusiastic approach to customer service, but also have high customer service responsibility.
EB Games embraces conventional retail sales tactics for in-store process.The online service process currently relies solely on the “customer service centre”, but EB developers managed to optimize their website so that allowing consumers to browse and purchase more easily.