Marcus’ Blog

Okay here’s another Hong Kong frustration. Number two in the series, as number one was about Hong Kong office lifts.

This post is about 7-Eleven and my annoyance with the fact that they’re one of the many Hong Kong retailers and businesses that have picked up on a part of the local community’s liking for collecting garbage collectables.

The latest in their series is a hello bloody kitty pin. I’m sure it comes in a hundred varieties and that it’s a ‘limited edition’ etc. (bla bla bla). Now their brilliant marketing idea is that lots of people would like to collect these annoying little space wasters and are now triggered to go and buy their things in 7-Eleven rather than the local Park’ n Rob, Wellcome, or elsewhere. Eureka the concept of customer loyalty is born - give your customers lousy gifts and some of them will come back to get more and spend more.

Here’s the little bugger:

There are many reasons to make a point out of this:

1. This is not a stand-alone case; 7-Eleven has done this for ages, and many other stores are doing similar things.
2. Many people get this tossed into their bags or hands unasked, so I’m sure many hello bloody kitty pins end up straight in the bin, unwrapped.
3. It is a waste of energy.
4. Discarded unused gifts do damage to the environment.
5. Hello Bloody Kitty is just hugely annoying in itself and enough of a reason to kick this up big.

I’m sure 7-Eleven analyzes the ROI on these rubbish marketing actions, but I wonder how they do it. They’re in the business of small ticket, low value impulse purchases and the majority of people would just go to the nearest shop to purchase these items, whatever name it has or whatever incentive it offers.
And 7-Eleven is just so bloody big here that you just drop into one on every street corner.

A hello bloody kitty pin can only appeal to a very specific segment of 7-Eleven’s total customer group - do they really spend more if given lousy little gifts?

I’m afraid they do - but in fact there’s probably a bigger and higher value segment that is getting increasingly annoyed by these actions.

So what you gain at the bottom end, you’re loosing on the top end.

I say here’s what we do with ‘em hello bloody kitty pins: