Did Sony Profit from the Walmart $100 Discount?

[Bodhesatva]

I Perdict said:

Bodhesatva said:

Yes. Of course.

And if Pizza Hut has a sale on Coke Products -- not just a sale on "soft drinks" -- then absolutely, unquestionably, Coke is shouldering most of the burden there.

Are you on crazy pills? How could you ever think that retailers would ever choose to lose millions of dollars promoting a single product? What do they stand to gain by promoting the PS3? If their goal was simply to increase foot traffic in the video game section, why not offer a deal on the Wii, the PS3, and the 360?

Right? Why not do all of them! That will increase traffic even further. Besides, Wal Mart is rich, they can afford it!

I use to work at Little Caesars and I can tell you Pepsi did not take the burden when we sold the product for sale.

How do I know?

Because we had no PU for free drinks. We never filled out how many were taken free. The money came out of each stores pocket.

Oh yeah 4 years ago I use to work at Speedway too and I can safely say that their coupons were speedway brand. Free fill up after blah amount of money spent.

Speedway ate those costs.

Why would a gas company redeem the stores own brands coupon?

You think it's a literal amount? As in "we sold 500 sodas at 1 dollar off, so you owe us 500 dollars?" Ugh, you're so far off. It's a much larger deal, with percentage calculations that are decided on way beforehand. Deals like this take months to work out.

I worked at Toys R Us for a long time, and there is no question that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo were in charge of these promotions. They would come by once a month to check on our product and make sure we were presenting it as they expected us too. They would bring us new banners and signs to hang up. They would bring in bundles to sell.

But guess what? We never literally kept track of every bundle and advertisement. We didn't send a bill for 1.2 million dollars to Nintendo for a DS bundle or something. I'm in the same boat as you in that regard, but unlike you I recognized that these sorts of promotions are being handled by people higher up than I. These are handled way up the food chain, executive to executive, with revenue breakdowns projected and divied months beforehand.

It's rare to see someone be so naive. I ask again: what does Wal Mart have to gain from promoting the PS3? If Sony dropped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, they could just promote the Wii and 360 instead. If the Wii died tomorrow, the PS3 would just get more shelf space. It doesn't matter at all who's selling the product, as long as it's selling. 

Who stands to gain from a 100$ off sale on the PS3? Not Wal Mart. Their foot traffic probably increased .05% last week thanks to this deal. You know who really benefits? Sony.

But Wal Mart probably took the millions-of-dollars of hit. As you said, they're rich. They can afford it, right? That's how big companies work.