Page 82 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

37 MAKE IT EASY FOR
PEOPLE TO PAY

We all want to buy things—sometimes we can’t, because we
simply don’t have the money. People don’t necessarily want to put
things on credit cards, and in any case, for a high-value item a credit
card might be wholly inadequate.

Hire purchase, leasing, bank loans, and the like may or may not fit
the bill either—this is why part exchange was first developed, by
General Motors, as a way of stimulating the secondhand car market
and thus (by extension) stimulating the market for new cars.

For some businesses, finding creative ways for someone to pay for
things is a marketing issue. There is an old joke about two shoe
salespeople sent to the South Seas: after a week, one of them sends
a message home saying, “Nobody wears shoes here. Coming home.”
The other one sends a cable saying, “Nobody wears shoes here.
Send two containerloads immediately.” A marketer would cable
back saying, “Nobody wears shoes here, but they do grow wonderful
mangoes. I have arranged a deal with a cannery on the next island
to buy the mangoes, and with the earnings from this the islanders
will be able to buy shoes. I have measured a sample of their feet, and
we will need mainly size 8s, wide fitting, but we should have around
10 percent of the shipment in 9s and 10 percent in 7s. Women’s
shoes should be mainly flat-heeled due to the rocky terrain here.”

This marketer is thinking about the customer’s needs, not just the
company’s needs: it is fairly obvious who will do the most business.

The idea

Not one idea, but many, all from Barratt the housebuilding company.
Barratt’s was founded by Laurie Barratt, who is not a builder at all but

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