Videos have been circulating showing mature people of at least 54 years forming long queues at Huawei stores across Singapore on Friday. They wanted to get their hands of one of the sets that usually retails for $200, at $54. This was part of Huawei's marketing campaign for the period leading up to Singapore's National Day. Predictably, supplies were short and those who queued for long hours were upset. Some even fought in the queue and the police were called in.
To remind, this is not the first time that queuing in Singapore turned ugly. In 2000, the McDonald's Hello Kitty promotion caused rioting and more recently, police had to intervene to stop a company from giving away money in Raffles Place.
The marketing tactic was clever and prayed one of our greatest weakness, greed. Some of the 54 year old people in the queue were probably hoping for a cheap and affordable phone for their own use. There were probably more who were intending to flip the phone on Carousell. Of course, you can fault Huawei for not declaring upfront the amount of stock they have. But why would they? It is after all their plan to generate publicity after suffering some reputational loss from a US ban. For new launches of iPhone, Apple also does not state upfront how much stock they have.
The marketing departments know that greed alone is not drive throngs of people to their store. The presence of queues is necessary because it is social proof. This then drives herd mentality, because we seek safety in numbers whether to seek pleasure or avoid pain. apart from clothes, we are no different from pigeons flying to a existing, feeding crowd, or fish chasing after what they think are bread crumbs.
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