Shopping During Big Sales

How often do you go shopping? Be it window shopping or actual buying of stuff you like. Do you go during Big Sales period or you rather shop with peace knowing not many people will patronise those shopping centres during non-peak period.

In Malaysia, during those Mega Sales during mid-year or end of the year holidays, you could sense how big is the crowd just by entering the basement car parks. Normally, I'll drop by Mid Valley for my stuff. But this megamall's car park is definitely not enough for the crowd that it could draw. My worst experience was 30 minutes going round and round.

During those Mega Sales time, you could every shops reducing their prices/giving discounts to clear their stocks in anticipation of the arrival of new stocks. You could see people thronging those lowly priced items but you would still be able to have a look or touch/feel that item to see if it suits you.

Well, in China, Carrefour in Chongqing city had a tremendous shock of their life. As known, Carrefour is famous for buying their goods in bulk which enabled them to sell it to their customers at a lower price. Carrefour displayed a notice staying that vegetable oil would be sold at 39.9 yuan instead of 51.4 yuan for a limited time, a savings of 11.5 yuan (only about US$1.50).

When the news leaked out, huge crowd started to gather for the opening of that particular Carrefour. Not knowing what to expect when the door was opened, the crowd pushed their way in and a stampede occurred. People were pushing their way through and started hunting down the vegetable oil.

End result:-
* 3 customers died
* 31 customers injured
* China government has banned sales promotion with time limitation

Bear in mind, even in a city like Chongqing their population could number a few millions. So, such tragedy if it happens could result in terrible stampede. Stay faraway from those Big Sales if China if you are there. You have no experience in handling such crowd......hehe

Reading: How to avoid another Carrehour stampede - Danwei
Tags: Carrefour, Chongqing, China, Mega Sales, Big Sale