Complimenting My Guitar…

On Sun­day, Wal­Mart com­pli­mented my gui­tar, while Tar­get did not.  Those who have heard me play would prob­a­bly ask “why any­one would com­pli­ment my gui­tar?” No I am not talk­ing about the “nice play­ing” type of com­pli­ment, but rather the idea of sell­ing com­pli­men­tary prod­ucts.  This con­cept was illus­trated to me over the week­end as I made trips to both big box retail­ers.  Allow me to explain.

Sun­day morn­ing the fam­ily and I headed to Tar­get to pick up some gro­ceries.  We typ­i­cally pick up the stuff in cans and boxes at Tar­get because it is sub­stan­tially cheaper that any­where else — not to men­tion Tar­get often  has some cool new items to check out.   Well, as we made our way through the store, I remem­bered that I was in need of a new gui­tar cord.  The old one shorted out.  So, know­ing that they have a few instru­ments in the back cor­ner of the store, I assumed that surely they would have what I needed.  Alas I was mistaken…

Now the point of this post is not about Tar­get, Wal­Mart, or any other spe­cific retailer.  I just use them to illus­trate a point about some­thing I observed.  Tar­get had ampli­fiers, key­boards, elec­tric gui­tars, tuners, and even gui­tar effects ped­als, but they did not have a gui­tar cord.  This would seem to be an assump­tive sale for any­one pur­chas­ing any of the afore­men­tioned prod­ucts, as they all require cords to work.  Thus Tar­get is not only leav­ing easy money on the table by not car­ry­ing gui­tar cords, they are going to force me to go else­where to get it.

Now I have per­son­ally have a gui­tar, but if I were in the mar­ket for a low end, new gui­tar, such as the ones they stock, I would now be forced to com­par­i­son shop with Tar­get.  Even if I bought the gui­tar and ampli­fier at Taret, the need for a cord would take me to another store.  The other store would then have the oppor­tu­nity through pric­ing, sales­man­ship, and pro­mo­tion to talk me out of the Tar­get pur­chase.   Sup­pose I drove around the cor­ner to Gui­tar Cen­ter and dis­cov­ered a bet­ter gui­tar for less, a more sophis­ti­cated ampli­fier for roughly the same amount, and the cord that I needed to make them work.  Now, sup­pose the sales pro­fes­sional is good enough to ask what the cord is for, and I tell him about my expe­ri­ence.  If that per­son were smart they could say some­thing like — “Why don’t you buy the same gui­tar and amp here and I’ll throw in the cord for free — just return the other one for a refund at Tar­get.”  Now they built cus­tomer loy­alty, made a sale, and screwed the com­pe­ti­tion in the process.

Back to my story about Sun­day.  The fam­ily and I had to run an errand later in the day that took us to Wal­Mart — some­where I rarely visit.  Again, I thought to look for the gui­tar cord, assum­ing that if Tar­get sold instru­ments, so would Wal­Mart.  I found some instru­ments in the Toy Sec­tion and there along side them was a gui­tar cord… which I bought.

Admit­tedly it was a con­ve­nience pur­chase.  I buy most musi­cal gear at a music store.  Still, this story high­lights the impor­tance of com­pli­men­tary prod­ucts.  What do you sell that requires a com­pli­men­tary prod­uct to make it work.  Could you offer some­thing addi­tional to keep peo­ple from going elsewhere?