Market penetration or the McDonaldization of SL

That reminds me, having built the first incarnation of the Aqua mall, that I'm open to offers for other mall owners who'd like an undiluted if more detailed execution on their lots. I'd be willing to customize the original stalls for resale at a reasonable rate.

Why fight it, its all going to be malls eventually

Oh, and I have the deco-inspired tower structure available too, just IM me for a quote.

Thanks.

Real life money to throw??

I've sustained my mall efforts - Aqua and the Galleria Sims, by dwell and rent - NOT USD.

Im a married mother of 2, my husband does not support my SL habbit and I am not allowed to use our accounts to support SL. If i cannot pay my bill with my SL only paypal account - where i deposit converted Linden, then shite out of luck because I cant pay it with my families money.

And yes when Mochastyle went up January I did visit and see it full of items from you and Julia.

Briana Dawson

Yes, it was a couple of weeks before the first vendors moved in. It turned from a store to a mall because people wanted in...

I'm pretty new to SL, but I find the mall concept a bit annoying when i'm looking for a specific item. They *are* great for browsing, though.

The real annoyance goes like this (ok, I dont have a real example so i'm going to make up the numbers for this)

Lets say I want some shoes, so I go to the find menu and look for shops with the description "shoes"
40 places come up, so I pick the first likely shop, teleport and start flying.
The place is a mall and I find the shoe vendor and brown all the Items, but i'm frugal and I want to comparision shop so I go to the next location.
Teleport, fly and ... The next location is a mall with the exact same items for sale I just looked at.
This keeps happening over and over and I find that there are really only 4-5 shoe vendors but they are duplicated all over the place.

So, lately when I want to find a specific item I go through the list and look for specialty shops first and don't bother with the malls unless I cant find what I want anywhere else.

just my 2$L

I would like to add Midnight City in umber has done a good job avoiding the typical Mall feel. When Midnight City was first created we decided we wanted it to be a city first, a shopping center second. Every retailer gets a spot of land and creates their own building according to their needs in the style of a modern city. Attractions are sprinkled in between such as "Aimee's Gaint Kitchen", Club Midnight (a matrix-like dance club), Coffee Talk cafe, and Midnight Park.

I don't know that this is the optimum solution to selling things in SL as we were shooting for charm more than ruthless efficiency. However we are almost always on the "Most popular places" list, and frequently in the top 10. So we have been really pleased with the results.

-Aimee

And you should be. That's a nice place, with a distinctive feel to it. It's one of my favorite browsing spots.

Ok, everyone start renting out their forum sigs for banner ads. On 3, 2.....

Oooh, that spot with Aimee's Giant Kitchen is fantastic. A true "town square" feel to the place. I also frequent it.

Orginaly Quoted by Lordfly:

Lordfly your exactly right however in the past the concensus was OMG COMERCIALISM is going to take over SL.

Sarcasm aside it can be done but how much ranting will go on?

[Sarcasm ON]

Lets see in the past there were the "BILLBOARD WARS" that went over well and everyone screamed they were a nusance.

Then lately there was the "IM SPAM" and the "SNAG A NEWBIE AT THE ENTRANCE AREA"

some of these have been abated and defined through the TOS as violations so how does one advertise their product so the new member knows where to go with a well informed decision.

Right now no where legitimately. Especially that won't offend the politically and commercialy correct. So what do vendors do, they, like the tribes of old conglomerate together in mini malls as it's a mini mall it's like the place to be able to do just that advertise and sell your wares.

Mom n Pop opperations mostly work off word of mouth of friends and holding dwell events but n the end were a person to go buy 16 x 32 meter plots just for the purpose of putting up bill boards the wars would be on again.

For instance if a person was so obligated they could keep a customer list. But, how many people would bitch and whine the first time they got a "Come on back and take a look at our new product line" note card or IM. It would be flamed all over these message boards like it was a sign from god that those that did it were blasphemous and evil.

Or even recently when I did the test about Paying a person a percentage to bring customers to a store to view clothing articles. That went over like a ton of whale manure on a capsized boat. People ranted that if they had a sales person walk up to them they would neg rate the sales person and the Creator for even contemplating such a concept of bringing marketing to them.

People that scream the loudest get what they want and when they do its never what they really wanted in the first place.

Back in Beta people screamed/ranted/ and raved about Linden Lab trademark apparell. My partner and I go and make an online store that is dedicated to it. On top of that it was sanctioned and licensed by Linden lab. Result: it's comercializm and I get shot in the foot over it.

So please tell me what options do we have anymore about advertising that isnt against the TOS or wont offend the POLITICALLY CORRECT crowd?

I mean really Im not trying to be snide or rude or offend anyone but apparently anything anyone does that is of a commercial venture that makes money of any sort is wrong in a lot of peoples eyes.

Which in itself is sad considering LL is working towards a larger picture which involves ADVERTISING/DIVERSITY/"TINKERING".

There is only so many ways to scrtinize a cube or a sphere or even a multitude of both but that correlates back to RL and resources and things done with resources. But the marketing aspect of resouces are limited. We dont have Magazines or Newspapers in which to advertise. If we put up a billboard we get canabalized for making grafftie. If we drop note cards we are spaming, if we Im and tell people anything about our store or ventures we are harrassing. So someone please tell me what is a Creator to do what avenues can we go down that hasnt been gone down before and shot in the ass over.

Right now we have four options

#1 Classifieds on the Messageboard Classifieds.

#2 Tele Hub Information panels

#3 Mini Malls

#4 Word of mouth of pleased customers.

Anything other than that right now will get the owner/creator flamed neg rated and all in all a bad reputation as being some sort of money grubbing cheat.

So anyone got any other Ideas that doesnt involve websites or outsourcing sales people to do the work for you? Id be greatly interested in knowing. I know my post may sound snide and condesending and its intent was to bite a little because of all the bitting that has be done in the past by the drama finatics. The world won't end if we have comercialization or advertising but it may make people more aware of whats out there.

But, thats my explination on why the Mini malls are like McD's or a cookie cutter pattern or design. It's because anything else will get cut to schreds by SL POLITICALLY CORRECT.

[end Rant]
[end sarcasm]
[end Venom]

Sincerely, Shadow Weaver

Yeah, totally -- I like a lot of that atmosphere. Here are some other nice touches about Midnight City in my book:


-OMG!!! YOU ANSWERED MY QUESTION! WHEN I WENT IN THAT CLUB I COULD SEE MEROVINGIAN SNEERING FROM ME ABOVE! NO WONDER!! Okay, that answers that. Onto the next one..

-Big Loads Laundry, a perennial fave of mine. If the washers made sounds and if I could rez and load my clothes in (heck, I only have one outfit anyway ) then that'd be even more magical

-Coffee Talk cafe is great. Wasn't it Kenz who said "aren't knockoffs great?" I like the pumpkins in theme with the season, and the leaves drifting through.

-the day (days) damaged was enabled and I got killed 6 times in Midnight City

-sleeping in the dumpster for warmth and comfort

-the cats in the city. I found one, a gray one with blue eyes, that sits there and looks pretty, and another one that walks like an insectoid of sorts and which was patrolling the streets

-WORKING TRAFFIC LIGHTS! NICE! As for those stop signs, maybe SL ought to have an octagon prim

-Aimee's Kitchen is a fave. Aimee did you have a pic posted anywhere in there of your real kitchen? If so, I haven't seen it, but it'd be fun to compare how both of them look alike. It's such an innocuous building from the outside.

LOL! Torley, thanks for posting all that. I have the habit of making a beeline inside the stores and standing in front of the displays for hours. I need to wander around more.

People should come and penetrate my market....I've been told its nice and I would like it to be penetrated more

...

Ok maybe not penetration yet as the market is new....how about some heavy petting then?