IT fair, March edition 2008

I bet lots of our flyers flew and landed somewhere~

So IT show at suntec ended 2 days ago. And finally I have sometime to blog about it. So many projects in hand and they are getting out of hand!

Anyway, I was promoting for a new brand of laptops in Singapore market. Pushing a new product in Singapore is certainly tough and not very morale boosting. Anyway, for the past four days in the IT show, the 2 most common question I heard was, 'What brand is this?' and 'Is this a Korean brand?' and basically when I tell them this is a China brand, 97.59483958% of the time, you will hear weird noise and see strange expressions on their face. So I made plenty of 'enlighten' to them about the brand. Half of them listened, the other half ignored.

Anyway, as a promoter at IT fair, 90% of the guys are mixing the truth and cheats. Providing plenty of information to the consumer crowd and at the same time convincing them to buy their product.

So what about the other 10%?

They are really trusted brand and the promoters are basically hired to collect money. Minimum talking and maximum wages.

Anyway, I think I did well this time round considering how difficult I think it was to sell my product. I told all the truth I could, convince them with the price and try to minimize their fear by telling them more about the products. Plenty of 'convincing' was made and I am happy, since most of the consumers seems to buy with - no regrets.

I learnt plenty in this show. I learnt many specs about IT parts from consumers, promoters and flyers. I applied my marketing theory into use as well. Like how you influence the right person (The person who pay or the one who makes decision in the group) in a crowd to get the sales. I experienced the hardship of promoting a new product and learnt that gaining awareness for a new product is difficult. And of course, I gain a level in buyer behavior and saw the ugly side of human.

There was this particular incident that happened and I have never seen such scenes before throughout my working life in IT shows. Most likely I was 井底蛙 but still it shocked me.

During the last moment of the show, there was one display set left for sale and three person was fighting for it. Inital price offered was $1049 and was finally going out at $800. However, they were not satisified. One uncle commented about the weight and was hesistating since it was meant for his wife, one indian was asking for $700 and another couple just didn't want a display set.

So, my boss decides to sell the display set at $780 and the uncle got it. I was wondering, 'So $20 makes up for the weight problem?' But anyway he got it.

The couple went off without getting anything and the Indian? He stood there still asking for $700. He approached me and told me he would take one if it goes for $750 but still my boss didn't want to since we would be making a big loss. He stood there for basically 30minutes and in the end gave in to $800 with a few extra free gifts.

What surprises me was people could actually do such extreme stuffs and could stand and pester so long for that mere few dollars different. No wonder foreigner makes so many comments like, 'You got to bargain and ask for discount in Singapore'. Pretty bad reputation we got . Haiz.