Archived AAR and Gift Card Promos - HELP!

[EagleEye]

Hi! I own and captain AAR in my store and I (and I'm sure many of you) have noticed when we have weeks like this one, AAR plummets. This week's ad features iPods, 2nd-4th Gen iPads, and XBOX systems with a Free Gift Card promotion. Guests are intelligent and know they can do a second transaction to use their gift cards to buy any accessories they want to purchase. Does anyone have any strategies they use in times like this so that AAR doesn't slip due to this issue?

Some background on my store: we are 58% (Green) YTD AAR, 3rd in our district. We generally sit around a 60-70%, however when we hit a week like this week, we usually come in at 40% or LOWER, as do most of the stores in our district.


Here are the strategies I use to try to "plant a seed of thought" in the guests mind:

1. I usually try to mention that the gift cards do not expire, hoping to convince them to hold on to it for a later purchase.

2. During 4th quarter mostly, I always mention that gift cards make great gifts. The guest may want to hold on to it to give to someone rather than use it to buy their accessory separately.

3. Nonchalantly ring up all of the guest's items. If they don't ask to separate transactions, then why bother? Money is money.

 

[Jack of all Workcenters]

I'd be curious to see if arr is affected if the guest uses their red card.

 

[EagleEye]

I'd be curious to see if arr is affected if the guest uses their red card.

Red Cards do not have any direct correlation with AAR metrics.

 

[eguru]

I would always do #3. Seemed to work most of the time. I hate those stupid gift card promo's.

 

[Super]

Problem here is....What do guests care about more? Our AAR or the person saving money? lol

if they complain that they were somehow "forced" to not use their gift card for that accessory or whatever they say...It's us the Electronic TM who has to hear about it from a GSTL or something about not doing the "Vibe" Such a grey area that thing is 😛

 

[EagleEye]

Problem here is....What do guests care about more? Our AAR or the person saving money? lol

if they complain that they were somehow "forced" to not use their gift card for that accessory or whatever they say...It's us the Electronic TM who has to hear about it from a GSTL or something about not doing the "Vibe" Such a grey area that thing is 😛

That makes sense, however, a $20 gift card is still a $20 gift card regardless if you use it at the time of the transaction. Most people don't think that way unfortunately. They seem to think using that gift card right away saves them more money.

Another problem my store sees with these gift card promotions is fraud. People come in with $1500 worth of giftcards they got through a fraud chain and then come back day after day and buy two iPads. All of a sudden at the end of the week, we end up selling a total of 20 iPads with 1 or 2 accessories. It's killin' us!

 

[tororosso07]

Its a tricky deal for sure, but it helps at our store that when people come and buy the big dollar electronics that they come to us first and then shop for everything else so we tell them they can use it for the rest of there shopping in the store and it seems to work the last two weeks we had apple gift card promotions we finished 1st in our group

 

[mrknownothing]

Another problem my store sees with these gift card promotions is fraud. People come in with $1500 worth of giftcards they got through a fraud chain and then come back day after day and buy two iPads. All of a sudden at the end of the week, we end up selling a total of 20 iPads with 1 or 2 accessories. It's killin' us!

Always let AP know when you have transactions like that, in case fraud was committed.

 

[EagleEye]

I'm aware. The sad thing is, these people have been doing this for months. We have no way to prevent the fraud transactions and hope that the police just issue a warrant and catch them.

Basically, they use a fraud credit card to buy large dollar amounts and then return them for gift cards. They do this for a while and somehow get cash back because of going to so many different stores. Then they eventually work their way up to carrying around about a 10 card stack of $600 Target gift cards, and go from Target to Target buying 2 iPads.

Bite my tongue so hard when I see someone I've seen like 4 other times.

 

[EagleEye]

Just coming back to follow up, my store and almost every other store in the district came up 40% or lower on AAR for the week of the gift card promos. Lowest store in our district was a whopping 23%. Sad...

 

[nolongerspecial]

At my store, we all just warn the etl's ahead of time that we have a big gift card promo going on that week and therefore the attachments are going to take a hit. We all knew the iPad promo was going to kill us - and every single store in our district was red last week. Big ups to corporate for pushing us to do something in the first place and then making it as difficult as possible by their own hand.

 

[Electronics Man]

We barely made it out of that week. We were not red, but we were yellow. It stinks because we were only a few points off being green. Oh well this last week with the PS4 launch we will be solid green.

 

[tororosso07]

Well pulled out some miracle and got 65 percent for that iPad week so it is possible but not likely only 2 other stores besides us were green in the entire group