Olivia 9 Alternate Shapes and How Not to Make Money
mwokee
Posts: 1,275
in The Commons
Can someone explain the marketing strategy of why Olivia 9 Altetnate HD Shapes is available for only a limited time? You could be selling it next week, next month, next year. I can use it but I can't justify the cost. Sometimes I'll wait 2-3 years for something to go on sale and hit my price point. Doesn't matter if I'm a cheapskate or economically challenged, you can't make money if it's not for sale. I get the strategy is to make people snatch it now but it's a strategy of short term gain and long term opportunity lost.
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I was also confused as this is so much more expensive than the Olympia shapes (hadn't even noticed that before), but I think it's because there's also an additional texture set included. It's still very expensive for an add-on.
I almost bought the Karmen 9 HD Pro Bundle a couple of weeks ago until I realized that it no longer had the alternative shapes included. I ended up passing on it since that was important to me. I don't understand why they only offer for a limited time unless they only care about new purchases and don't care making sales on it later on. I understand it's probably going after the "Buy now, for a limited time only!! Hurry up!!! You can never get it again, be special!" type sales pitch, but that just makes me run the other way... They market Daz very much like a free-to-play game with all these crazy sales targeted as a gambling experience instead of fun tool to create art. You just need to keep that in mind when shopping on the store. Limited time falls into that marketing strategy and maybe their sales metric says it works? I wonder if they will throw in one that says (alternative shapes are always included) to gather metrics for G9 comparison (since they started this with G9 only afaik)?
It's interesting I think, apparently all G9 Pro Bundle pages have been changed, there's no mention of the limited-time offers of the alternate shapes anymore. At least not where I checked, which was Amelia and Karmen. Maybe sooner or later they'll be out for sale like normal items.
The way I see it is they offer the alternative shapes when the bundle is released to get users to impulse buy and then later on after the bundles buying has died down, to allow users that didn't get a chance or didn't want the bundles, they give them a chance to pick up the alternative shapes then, at least that is how it seems to me and I could be wrong. Of course, this being DAZ, there will always be complaints no matter what route they take.
Making them available again after some time makes business sense. But only for 2 days, much less so.
The mentions and the renders regarding these shapes dissapeared when then were no longer available (so 30 days after release).
My objective is straightforward: to introduce something distinct and unique to the market.
This aspiration is shared among us all. While enticing individuals to invest in various products presents its challenges, Daz employ various strategies to achieve this. While differing opinions on the sale are entirely acceptable, it does bring a sense of sadness to see everything being scrutinized when we are putting in sincere efforts.
Be kind.
This is the "McRib" marketing strategy. By building a perception that a product is of limited availability, the vendor hopes to engender a buy based on FOMO. Then, by then re-introducing it a good while later, also for a limited period, the hope is that A. those who didn't buy based on said promotion will have at some point had second thoughts and B. might be willing to splurg a second time around. This trick has worked quite well in turning the McRib, a mediocre sandwich composed of processed spare meat parts compressed into a false shape and with a strong artificial aftertaste, into something some people will continue to queue up for, despite the fact that it's nowhere near as good as a real barbecued rib sandwhich. Of course, the current generation of DAZ Marketing has screwed up the entire concept by waiting only a few months to bring back the "never available again" product, thereby cluing the customer base in on the fact that this is exactly what it seems to be.
This whole situation has gotten so weird. We WANT to buy great products, PAs here are creating such beautiful things! I come in to DAZ every bleeding morning in the hopes of finding something shining and lovely to look at and play with before life gets a chance to hit me with its usual BS. And the PAs, of course, WANT to sell us their shiny and lovely things. So where is the need to create FOMO and all these other marketing shenanigans really? It gets in the way of a happy buyer-seller relationship more than doing anything good, methinks.
For instance, I really liked Amelia, and I liked her alt shapes even more. But because they were locked inside the bundle and even strapped with that time bomb thingy, I purposely refrained from buying. Now where's the sense in that? For anyone??
DAZ, guys, please stop listening to your marketing person. We'd get along SO much better without them.
I know from experience that EVERY product released on DAZ 3D is potentiallly a "limited edition" available for a "limited amount of time" - sometimes as short as ONE day. A 3D model of the art deco district of Miami Beach was released here (I bought it immediately) and it disappeared from the store the NEXT day. The entire product catalogues of particular 3D content artists have also disappeared without any warning. My rule now is that when I see a new product released here that I can't live without, I buy it INSTANTLY. Too many times, items I've badly wanted have disappeared from the store with no notice and no explanation. So folks - if you see it and you want it, BUY IT RIGHT NOW, because you may never get the opportunity to buy it later. Believe me.
You're absolutely correct, but this also is how one is trained up to become an impulse buyer. Not a good route to go. So yes, I'll buy things on the spot if I love them and the price is okay - that is a very, VERY good rule here. But if I just like them and DAZ wants me to jump through 3 hoops and do a backflip and all of this done NOW NOW HURRY OR IT WILL BE GOOOOONE ... Thanks but no thanks. Which, again, is so unnecessary really ...
everyone needs to have money, but the way pricing here is going up, I think it will end up with diminshing return. Those alternate things are nice but I think up in price, especially that one for $27. But the G9 figures are way out there... $60 ??? Give me a break. Are they that good? not in my wallet's eyes.
FOMO is not applicable with 3D and Daz. Especially after you guys have spent years training us that "At some point, Daz will sell this for a $1 or put it on sale for 85% off"
I've just about stopped buying here outside of props, vehicles and very little character bits like clothing, shoes and hair unless it's created to fit both G8 and G9 figures. It really began for me when the G9 figure was released. All my content is for G8 and G9 isn't backwards compatible like G8 being able to wear G3 items. Unless you purchase all kinds of fixes offered in the marketplace that I can't afford.
I would never single out any PA because I know the hoops they have to jump through and the hours and months creating content for sale. But as of late I have found the offerings, especially for G9, quite bazaar in many respects. I do think there are some fabulous older female figures for G9 which I have been tempted to buy. However, the lack of content especially in footwear and clothing leave much to be desired. And of course G9 can't use half of the G8 content I own.
Personally I don't understand the constant re-carnations of past figures or themes. Sometimes it feels like nothing is fresh and new. It's all being to look the same to me. It's hard to buy content that has been recreated for newer figures. But to each his own I guess as I said this is just my opinions which mean nothing.
Top of list of non-scenery items I want, and can't buy right now:
There were absolutely no middle-aged women here or at Renderosity when I started -- a great nuisance for visual story-telling. Z-brush-sculpted middle-aged men are much easier to find, although historical dress for them is another matter. So my collection isn't where I want it yet.
If the probability of my buying an always-available particularly desireable item, on a given day sometime in the next year, is n -- basically, when the amount of money I think I should spend is higher than the price...
Then if the middle-aged female alternative forms are available all at once, and for only 48 hours in 6 months, or 4 days/year ...
The probability that I'll buy any of those Genesis 9 females is 4/365 * n, or ~.01n, compared to n for mal3Imagery's items.
The odds are therefore 100:1 in favor of my buying uniforms instead of Genesis 9 women.
But it is…
Autofit clones for all previous Genesis lines are included in the Genesis 9 Starter Bundle. Here's Victoria wearing the Journeyer Scout outfit (and a Genesis 9 sword because I didn't want to spend my day positionning it in her hand
):
What's not included is autofit clones to use Genesis 9 clothes on previous Genesis figures (which seems to be what's usually done: I had to download autofit clones to use G8 clothes on G3, clones done by the same person who wrote the tutorial bellow), but you can either buy a product or build one following a tutorial.
The product: https://www.daz3d.com/mmx-genesis-9-clones-for-all
The tutorial to create your own autofit clones (I suppose the process is the same for every generation but I bough the product, so I don't know): https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/599231/making-clones-of-g9-tutorial/