Woot Taking Advantage of Impulse Buyers

Woot is one of those revolutionary internet ideas that took hold and now has a culture and following of its own. This company has made its mark by having a deal-a-day and selling only that one product for the entirety of the day until it is sold out. Even more interesting is that it can receive 7 million requests for a “Bag of Crap” like it did on April Fools Day 2011.

What really perplexes me is how people are willing to buy a product simply because it is available. Woot sells a variety of items ranging for t-shirts to digital cameras. For some reason, people think that because a product is featured on the site, it is inherently a great deal. Out of curiosity I have begun researching what the products on Woot typically are sold for elsewhere and if there is any better product on the market for that price. What I have found is that many times there is a slight discount on the product but it is rare for it to be the best option available on the market. Users would typically be better served shopping around for a digital camera than buying the one that is featured on the site.

My hypothesis of this impulse buying phenomenon was confirmed at a recent “Woot Off” earlier this month. I watched as one product after another flew off the site as it was sold out. One product that was featured during that day was “Tron: Legacy 12” Ultimate Action Figure Set.” I thought to myself that surely this would take a long time to sell out since Tron had a reputation as being a horrible movie and an action figure from the movie would be even more useless, especially when it cost the user $25 to buy and ship it. As of 8:45 when I logged on there were no units sold yet as it had just been posted. Then at 9:13 when I refreshed the page it was sold out. In less than a half hour, all of the Tron action figures were had been purchased.

We certainly live in a culture of impulse buying and Woot is capitalizing on this as well as any company on the market. People are purchasing goods off Woot because they get eager to buy something and because they want to see what product comes up next. This is a sad reflection on our culture and a pathetic use of the financial resources people have.