The Pre-Order Phenomenon

Really not a new strategy....if a Mnf feels the demand will outstrip the supply its been done for decades.....EG, Harley-Davidsons (the factory didn't like this) in the US were so hard to get at one time that there were 2 year waiting lists with dealers for new bikes and the used ones sold for far more than MSRP.
 
Leica has the same situation at the moment with lenses. 🙂 Get on the waiting list. But a pre-order as I understand the term, is ordering before the product has actually began shipping as opposed to products that are in limited supply.
 
I guess the difference between back ordered and pre order is generally you know what you are getting when it is backordered. pre-order is always a guess since nobody has really used the item.
 
I got on the waiting list at my local camera store for the XPro-1 - no deposit, so if one comes in and I'm broke or the AF turns out to suck, or whatever, I'm not beholden to buy it, and they'll move on to the next customer.

No downside for me.
 
Pre order is just a sterile version of waiting list. The word wait is one those that the marketers are a bit afraid of: it could mean your product is popular or it could mean there is a problem. Pre order denotes eagerness with the flexibility of dropping out, which equals good as there will be someone to take their place.
 
digitalintrigue said:
Leica has the same situation at the moment with lenses. 🙂 Get on the waiting list. But a pre-order as I understand the term, is ordering before the product has actually began shipping as opposed to products that are in limited supply.
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Good point. The waiting list is very different from the pre-order list.

I got on the waiting list for an Elmar 24/3.8, and by good fortune it came through, after many months, just before last Christmas, just before the most recent price increase, and just at the moment when I could avoid hefty European VAT by a family visit back to New York. But most of all, by the time I got the darn thing, I was really sure that I could use it/wanted it. Early indications are that it really is that good. For landscape, it offers that elusive combination of wide fov, corner-to-corner sharpness, microcontrast, and small size (hoodless). It would even work on an M9, which my ZM 21/4.5 wouldn't.

Sooooo, for things that will be used on many occasions over an extended length of time, waiting is just part of the long term satisfaction.

Some people have experienced something similar with preordering. What may be a few months of early access to unobtanium can mean all the difference if it coincides with that special event (voyage or wedding).
 
jsrockit said:
The internet wasn't as mainstream either...
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Some still call the Internet a "phenomenon". Markets have evolved because of it, just as consumers' purchasing rhythms.

I wonder if color photography was still called a "phenomenon" in the 1970s, when it was by then a pretty established thing in daily life.

Pre-ordering wasn't invented as a marketing strategy: it evolved from the observed behaviour of certain consumers who really (and I mean *really*) wanted something so bad, that in order to avoid the craziness of standing in line for hours (even days), or for waiting for a local store to come up with a physical item for weeks, or months (like was the case with the Wii in North America, for example). Smart people realized how cost-effective it was to supply to people who had already put the money down by saving some stock overhead.

Of course, nuances will get lost on others and those "others" can misuse the concept. Things aren't really that simple, and oversimplifying tend to begin their end.

Take those video games spinned-off movies, for example: big-wigs think that the brand itself will be enough to sell the video games, hence the little investment to creativity and detail...hence the poor sales. Sure, some will sell because there's always a hard-core fanbase, but it's just catering to the fanbase, not to videogame players as a whole.

Same thing with pre-sales: myopically seeing them as simply "a marketing tactic" by either the seller or the consumer just creates disappointment for both.

But, also, just because one doesn't understand it it doesn't mean it's a phenomenon. The OP does touch on that point: some see a money-maker, and since it's "new" (and, oh, how golden that word is in the marketing world), there's this big-wig/MBA pressure to adopt it (because, are you kidding me? you gotta do it, everybody's doing it!)

When companies learn to strike a balance between "maximizing" and "not-silver-bullet-izing", they succeed. Sometimes they find pet crack candies (like outsourcing, cost-cutting for the sake of cost-cutting, fad monetizing, etc.) and just can't quit it.

No, this is not a phenomenon, it's all very predictable: somebody finds something that works, and the copycats want in on the money shaker.

End of rant 😱
 
I don't get the whole pre-order phenomenon either.

It's different from being a typical early adopter or lighthouse customer where you get some kind of special attention/pricing (or other quid pro quo) for all the risks and hassles of early adoption.

With cameras, it's not like you get any kind of special consideration. For digital cameras or anything electronic for that matter, I tend to be more of a 2nd or 3rd wave adopter, either roughly 6 months post-release or after 1 or 2 firmware upgrades, depending on my needs.
 
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