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NOVEMBER 29, 1924
THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
9
Bargain Prices and Player Selling
Not Confronting a Saturated Market, the Lure of Price Appeal Is Intrinsically Wrong in Retail Selling
Policies So Far as They Concern the Player-Piano and the Piano—Bargain Price Ad-
vertising in the Long Run Is Not Productive of Volume- Sales
T
H E R E has been an epidemic of "price"
advertising during the last few months,
an epidemic which has had the usual
course of such occurrences, in that it started
quietly, began to spread very rapidly, became
a plague, and then began to die away. It is
not dead altogether by any means, though one
may safely say that the worst of it is over.
What is the cause of these recurrent epi-
demics? Why is it that suddenly, after a
period of sanity and prosperity, there will sud-
denly come a rush of business-destroying, pres-
tige-killing publicity based upon the crawling
appeal to cheapness and to the desire to get
something for nothing? How and why do these
things happen, and can anything be done to
prevent their future occurrence, either wholly
or partially?
They happen of course as the result of fear.
The piano business has never been built up. It
has never been deliberately placed upon the
basis of national need, because its various ele-
ments have always been more interested in
fighting each other than in co-operating. The
player business has perhaps been more modern
and enlightened in its ideas but even here we
find that local and individual jealousy is still
an important factor and that it is difficult in
most cases to get the competing members of
the trade to work together for the suppression
of methods which harm them in the end much
more than they benefit even their authors. It
is jealousy and fear which produce the epidemic
of price advertising.
Averages Do Not Work Out
Fear is the result of the belief that the
course of business must always resemble a sinu-
soidal curve, with regular periodic ups and
downs. The chart of business progress does
indeed show that there are periods of good
times followed by periods of hard times, with
considerable approach to regularity; but no one
has ever shown that each and every line of
business is subject to the same periodicity.
Nothing of the sort indeed has ever been
proved, while on the contrary it has been shown
over and over again that in the piano business
at least good times neither raise it so high
nor bad times depress it so low as the general
average of the business curve would seem to
indicate.
When, therefore, we find dealers suddenly com-
plaining that business has fallen off, and begin-
ning to put out notices of drastic reductions
in prices in the attempt to coax back the sales
which no longer come walking in, we are safe
in concluding that the method will not be prac-
tical as a steady policy. It is a policy bred
of fear, and undoubtedly it will be a popular
policy despite its obvious fallaciousness, until
music merchants and piano manufacturers in
general understand much better than most of
them seem now to do, that the piano trade does
not follow the average curve of business de-
pressions and business revivals. It keeps to
itself along a line which dips in either direc-
tion much less than the average line. That
is because pianos (including of course players)
are not intensively sold and because therefore
the possible market is not intensively worked
as other markets are. In other words, there
is always so narrowly focused and compara-
tively feeble a salesmanship effort in the piano
trade generally that its full sales possibilities
are never worked out. Hence the peaks are
never high and so the troughs are never very
low on the curve of progress.- *
Selling pianos and player-pianos on the price
appeal is thus seen to be in every way wrong,
because, in the first place, the market is not
intensively worked down to the last prospect;
while on the other hand piano values are just
what the makers and sellers of pianos are will-
ing to make them. The public unhappily has
been most poorly educated on the whole sub-
ject of piano values and has thoroughly absurd
ideas about them, for which price advertising
is wholly to blame; but it must not be forgotten
that apart from this miseducated belief there
is no public feeling about piano and player val-
ues such as one finds with respect to the auto-
mobile, for instance. When an automobile
manufacturer announces that a certain model
will in future cost so and so much less than
it has been costing, almost every reader of the
statement can apply to it some test of experi-
ence and knowledge. On the other hand, when
the price of a piano is mentioned, no one, gen-
erally speaking, can tell whether the figure
given is justified or not. Cheap pianos and
good pianos, cheap players and good players,
player-pianos which cost at wholesale less than
$200 and others which cost twice as much, all
look very much alike to the uneducated eye;
and if they are not kept in tune sound very
much alike too. Naturally, the public is con-
fused and ignorant; and naturally also the price-
advertiser undermines his own business by
quoting figures which represent what would be
impossible bargains if quality were maintained,
but which, as things are, represent something
very much like a fraud upon the public, at the
least a playing upon public ignorance.
How much does price advertising sell? Of
course it sells a certain quantity of goods, es-
pecially at the beginning of a campaign but cer-
tainly the number of those who to-day are able
to buy player-pianos or pianos of any sort in-
deed, only at bargains, is very small. The bar-
gain advertising, and the puzzle contests and all
that sort of thing had their time when the pur-
chasing power of the people was very much
smaller than it is to-day, and when the ambi-
tion of every family was to have a piano in
the front parlor. But that is not the case any
longer. Bargain prices are no longer needed
to sell instruments to people too poor to buy
at fair prices. To-day the automobile is the
great sine-qua-non of the family which once
went bargain hunting for a piano or player-
piano. To-day the piano and the player-piano
must be sold to men and women who want
music in their homes. Such men and women
are normally able to pay a fair price for what
they want. Price advertising merely acts to
destroy in the minds of such men and women
whatever lingering respect they may have re-
tained for the piano business, without building
up that business in any way at all.
We Want to Build Up
We want to build up the business to-day and
not to pull it down. When a man tells one
that an advertisement offering some impossible
bargain has sold a number of pianos, it is
worth while asking six months later how many
repossessions there have been, how many of the
buyers turned out to be undesirable and how
much the sale of the better instruments at
their fair prices has been hurt by the adver-
tising of bargain prices out of all proportion
to real values. It is worth while asking fur-
ther what good is done to the business by
building and selling instruments which, in this
day and age, have no place.
For bargain price advertising means bargain
price instruments and these cannot stand pres-
ent-day competition. There is to-day a public
which knows what it wants, even though its
ideas of piano values are poor. It does at
least know enough to despise the tricks which
once were played with impunity, nor is any-
thing more certain than that bargain price in-
struments, of bargain price quality, hurt the
whole business, at a time too when it needs
all the building up it can get.
Whatever may have been the excuse some
time ago, there is no longer any rational ex-
cuse for piano or player advertising based on
price only.
The piano business has never been worked
intensively. Its market is still mainly unde-
veloped. It does not follow the average curve
of business rise and fall. Hence to assume that
it can be boosted up by methods which are
only applicable in the case of dry goods, for
instance, is to show both ignorance and extreme
recklessness.
Vocalstyle Rolls for Xmas
The Vocalstyle Music Co., Cincinnati, O., has
already begun to deliver to its dealers an impos-
ing selection of Vocalstyle rolls designed for
the holiday trade. In addition to eighteen spe-
cial rolls selected from the regular catalog and
particularly appropriate for Christmas, there is
also offered a timely novelty in a roll entitled
"Christmas at Grandma's," arranged by Mary
Allison, and most desirable for playing for the
benefit of the family circle at Christmas.
Lauter-
Humana
Player Piano
There is a steady,
persistent demand for
a high-grade player-
piano. The dealer
who features the
Lauter - Humana
naturally
attracts
this very desirable
trade to his store.
LAUTER GO.
Newark, N. J.
62nd Year