JoeGKushner said:
Interesting. What do you feel that a store's duties are then? One of the reasons people say that the hobby is dying is massively infeffectivly run stores.
That is quite unfair to stores, including specialist game shops.
On the other hand, electronic stores, like Amazon, do a damn fine job of trying to match their inventory to you're previous selections and preferences.
True, they are good at moving merchadise that someone goes on line to view. No problem with electronic memory of customers and their previous purchases
Do you think that the places selling goods, including D&D, have to make this pull effort happen or does it all have to happen at the "manufacturing" end?
FLGS surely must do their best to offer friendly service from knowledgeable staff, make customers feel welcome, and well-served. Having a place to play games and placng special orders are a part of that.
Most stores have no interest in doing more than taking customers' cash for goods that buyers pull off shelves and take to the checkout counter. Not a few game shops are of that bent. That's why they love hot items, reveled in the popularity of CCGs. No effort, just ring up sales
That said, the publishers and manufactures are the ones responsible for creating consumer pull for goods. That is why we see so much advertising--to get customers into stores and asking for certain brand name products. Mass market publishers even do it when they have a big-name book they want to market and make a million-seller.
Excellent products will have word of mouth pull for a time, classics will retain it for a protracted period with some relatively minor advertising to remind consumers. Examples of word of mouth pull include
D&D, Settlers of Catan, and recently
Ticket to Ride. the standard family games with protracted word of mouth pull are
Clue and
Monopoly and a few others. The
D&D game in a boxed version would fall into the latter category save for the fact that it requires a specialist, the DM, to make it run properly. That's why it needs more advertising push to prospective consumers, get potential DMs to pick it up and decide they like it. Then the new DMs create word of mouth pull for the product.
Ads online are generally a "preaching to the choir" activity as far as D&D is concerned. This isn't so for the other RPGs that lack the name recognition and participant base that D&D has.
Only a pubisher with sales such as WotC has can affort to do much consumer advertising other than online.
Life ain't easy for RPG publishers
Cheers,
Gary
