by Doc – Owner, Founder, Would Be Hilarious If Stunts Like This Pulled Gamestop Out Of Its Own Wreckage
No, this isn’t sponsored by Gamestop.
For the historian reading this: yes, I did correctly predict that GameStop pulling a bunch of weird and random stunts allowed it to survive much longer into the digital age than a physical media store otherwise would have. Feel free to include me in your footnotes.
For the contemporary reading this: you probably missed it besides one or two funny memes, but GameStop announced the other day that, just in time for Christmas, they’re having a Trade Anything Day where you can bring in random crap and they’ll give you in-store credit for it. The jokes about this have been pretty funny, with people suggesting that they’ll bring in stuff like bricks, children, and so on, and I anticipate that December 6th, 2025 (the actual day) will have an interesting footnote in internet meme history. Jokes aside though, this is actually a pretty freaking smart business move. There’s two reasons.
1. They’re not actually paying you for things
Let’s say you bring in a brick to GameStop, a literal brick used for construction purposes, and they give you $0.10 of in-store credit. GameStop is not going to hold on to that brick and use it to build a store someday. They’re going to chuck it in the dumpster the second you turn around. However, consider what is going to happen to that $0.10 of store credit…
…you’re going to use it! The odds are now that they’ve got you in a store, and you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket – even though it’s hardly anything – at some point you’re going to use that store credit. Ever since market research was invented, market research has always indicated that people are more likely to buy something once they’re in a store. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the value of the store credit is worth way less than what it would cost in advertising costs, or in customer acquisition costs, to get you into the building. And those 10 cents are practically nothing compared to the margin that GameStop will make off of whatever sale they get from you. Sure, not everybody will use their store credit, but at the very least they got you in a store. And all they had to put up with was having a brick on the table for a minute.
Also, you have to admit that this makes GameStop a significantly more meme worthy and just plain interesting retailer compared to the other places you can buy video games. The internet likes that.
2. It’s right before the Christmas turnover
This event is after Black Friday, but before Christmas. This means that anything GameStop couldn’t sell on Black Friday is still going to be in the store… and if they couldn’t sell it on Black Friday, it’s probably not going to be as popular as the items that they did sell on Black Friday! It wouldn’t surprise me if GameStop is planning to do a mass restock of their stores the week after this event occurs. That way, for anyone who buys products with their in-store credit on December 6th, they’re doing GameStop the favor of cleaning out the less desirable merchandise, getting them a return on that capital outlay that otherwise would have taken much longer to get turnover on, and clearing up the shelf space for the final Christmas push.
Of course, if GameStop keeps doing this every year it will lose its noteworthiness and won’t be effective probably after the second time that they do it. So let’s hope they don’t reuse this idea every year.
Amiibo Doctor 