What do you think? Bestsellers of marketing trick

[Kramer]

Something i've been curious about and would love to hear your opinion about. On the GW site they have a bestsellers list for AoS. I believe that the starter sets sell well. But let's be honest. No way Archaon, Alarielle, Nagash or those €100+ named characters sell the best. 

Or am I missing something?

 

h

[Turgol]

Maybe they do not count based on number of units sold but rather on income generated by each entry? I'am not sure what other items would be best sellers in AoS. It is not like 40k, where you know that they have to sell legions of SM tactical units boxes. Sure: liberators could have been that. But they need time to mature and they were way too expensive up to two weeks ago. 

[shinros]

Considering the Smaug from lord of the rings is the highest sold model the list does not surprise me. It's cause of their cost why they are up there Imo. Model quality also plays a part.

[deynon]

mah. I bought only 1 Nagash, but 3 mortarchs. Now there are convenient boxes but at the exit weren't. Sinply I think that's convenient for the boxes with relatively useful models. Big PGs are only one, it's useòess to have more so why packing them?

And even it it's not completeòy true cause there are big boxes which include also those PGs

[EvDJ]

GW have said they were first and foremost a model company, they have loads of customers who are modellers, who don't buy the models to play but to collect (myself included). So it doesn't surprise my at all that these models are on the best seller list. When Alarielle was released, if memory serves, GW said that she was the highest selling single model they'd ever made.

[mhsellwood]

1 hour ago, Kramer said:

Something i've been curious about and would love to hear your opinion about. On the GW site they have a bestsellers list for AoS. I believe that the starter sets sell well. But let's be honest. No way Archaon, Alarielle, Nagash or those €100+ named characters sell the best. 

Or am I missing something?

 

h

As you say the issue is lack of detail on how they quantify 'best seller'. It could be total dollars received, number of boxes sold or potentially total profit from a product (this option would naturally favour the big models as they should have a higher margin per item).

We also don't know the time scale, i.e. is it best sellers for the current and last financial year? For all time? Over the past week?

Also, does it just mean Best Sellers through the Web Store? Because that would obviously favour the big models because most of the core elements of the range would (I expect) be sold through the retail stores.

However they are measuring 'Best Sellers' what this tells is something interesting - from at least one point of view GWs competitive advantage is large plastic models that are very strongly rooted in the style of AoS.

[rokapoke]

Regardless of how they measure it (which I agree is up for much debate), hopefully GW creates some allegiance abilities (if not an entirely updated battletome -- hint hint) for Seraphon, since their Start Collecting! kit apparently sells rather well, particularly for a now-out-of-date army!

[Kramer]

33 minutes ago, mhsellwood said:

As you say the issue is lack of detail on how they quantify 'best seller'. It could be total dollars received, number of boxes sold or potentially total profit from a product (this option would naturally favour the big models as they should have a higher margin per item).

We also don't know the time scale, i.e. is it best sellers for the current and last financial year? For all time? Over the past week?

Also, does it just mean Best Sellers through the Web Store? Because that would obviously favour the big models because most of the core elements of the range would (I expect) be sold through the retail stores.

However they are measuring 'Best Sellers' what this tells is something interesting - from at least one point of view GWs competitive advantage is large plastic models that are very strongly rooted in the style of AoS.

Interesting questions indeed. Some answers, the first time I noticed this was during the summer. I can't promise the list was exactly the same but the big guys were there and a lot of the start collecting boxes. 

I agree with you that further embeds the big models in the game, at least from the GW standpoint. 

1 hour ago, EvDJ said:

GW have said they were first and foremost a model company, they have loads of customers who are modellers, who don't buy the models to play but to collect (myself included). So it doesn't surprise my at all that these models are on the best seller list. When Alarielle was released, if memory serves, GW said that she was the highest selling single model they'd ever made.

I believe that they sell a lot to modellers. But even if the modellers vs players is 50/50. But none of them benefit having from the Archaon model twice. Compare it with a core unit box, the modellers might not be that interested but the players need 2/3 of those boxes. The Alarielle fact is quite good! But it still feels like cherry picking by GW. (cherry picking in statistics, is adjusting the parameters to get a noticeable result) So I do believe that GW says so but it still feels a bit unbelievable.  Doesn't help I know

1 hour ago, shinros said:

Considering the Smaug from lord of the rings is the highest sold model the list does not surprise me. It's cause of their cost why they are up there Imo. Model quality also plays a part.

Fully agree that model quality plays a role, see also the argument above. But I always assumed Lord of the Rings draws more hobbyists than AoS or 40K. What do you think? That would make it askew comparison. 

2 hours ago, Turgol said:

Maybe they do not count based on number of units sold but rather on income generated by each entry? I'am not sure what other items would be best sellers in AoS. It is not like 40k, where you know that they have to sell legions of SM tactical units boxes. Sure: liberators could have been that. But they need time to mature and they were way too expensive up to two weeks ago. 

Could very well be. And maybe they will overtake the big models. But it's been awhile since they have been released. Would be amazing to see a selling comparison. So yeah, the might be a while. Because like you I assume the profit margin on the big guys is bigger. (although that would directly undermine the inclusion of the start collecting boxes. 

 

Thanks everybody for you input. It's indeed a conversation without end as long as the 'Best Seller' is not defined.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Gotta consider that a not-insignificant amount of people purchasing GW are primarily collectors. People who want nice models purely to paint and then likely display their work.

For example, I know a few people who have bought and painted Nagash despite seeing him played once, because he was very exciting when End Times hit and lots of people jumped on that kit. These models also tend to be nice centerpieces of an army that are taken out now and again for big event games, plus there's still a lot of Open and Narrative players who likely field them since they don't have to worry about them soaking up too many points to really work in most games.

[RuneBrush]

16 hours ago, Turgol said:

Maybe they do not count based on number of units sold but rather on income generated by each entry? I'am not sure what other items would be best sellers in AoS. It is not like 40k, where you know that they have to sell legions of SM tactical units boxes. Sure: liberators could have been that. But they need time to mature and they were way too expensive up to two weeks ago. 

^ This

It's a discussion I often have with my boss, how you determine the best sellers.  His view is you use the total value sold as this represents best sellers from a business point of view.  This means that you will naturally highlight products that have the largest profit with least effort - you would need to sell a lot of pots of Abaddon Black to make the same profit as you would on one Archaeon, even though I'm sure they physically sell more pots of black.

[Aggesut]

I work as a digital marketing manager and anything "Trending" or "Top selling" on site is usually allocated manually to push sales of a certain category or product. However, for most companies that have a massive set of products going in and out of stock, it's better to just let the algorithms sort it out.

In this case I believe GW is just pushing the products with the highest margin - at least on the first few products, the rest is most likely based on their algorithm for 'best-selling', whether that's based on products sold or margin I don't think we will ever know!

[Mortarch]

The inclusion of Smaug on the top of the list infers that this list is for the online store only as it is not available outside of it. To my knowledge GW treats the online store entirely separate from retail for reporting - so this would just be one of their stores having a most sold section.

The other thing you could infer from Smaug is that it is based on gross sales amount rather than units sold. No matter what the balance of Gamers to Hobbyists there are - theres not going to be a huge number of that model sold at that price point. That's just my opinion, but I reckon that its a reasonable one.

To the question of manual intervention in the list - with the Sylvaneth stuff near the top of the list, the GHB and a few other things that I know a lot of people have bought - I would imagine they dont need to manipulate it. If they were going to manipulate the list, the philosophy followed would probably be in line with other parts of the business.. Setting up for new releases or pushing recent releases. New unit of Chocobo knights? - "WOW these are our BEST selling unit... how come YOU dont own 5?!"

I reckon its online sales only, based on product value x units sold at unaltered algorithm... But then.. stranger things have happened.

 

M